Miranda's Enchanted April
by Mill Girl
Summary: The April before their wedding, Miranda takes Andrea on a road trip round Italy, where several strange and wonderful things happen to them. But before they get to Europe they have to organise their own wedding, and sort out the problems for everyone else in their circle who decide to follow suit and follow them up the aisle.
1. Chapter 1

(Author's Note.

I do not own these characters, nor do I have any rights over them. This story is part of my on-going Miranda's Sabbatical series and develops some of the newer characters. Apart from the very first one, The Touch, all my Miranda stories run in sequence, one after the other, and build on the one before, but I hope each story can also be enjoyed separately. Following and Favouring the stories is immensely appreciated as it helps people find them. )

Summary

The April before their wedding, Miranda takes Andrea and the twins on a road trip round Italy, where several strange and wonderful things happen to them all.. But before they get to Europe they have to organise their own wedding, and sort out the problems for everyone else in their circle who decide to follow suit and follow them up the aisle. It will be a very busy eight weeks ahead for the entire cast of characters, but of course our main focus as always will be on Miranda and Andrea. The story is also unashamedly romantic.

Chapter 1. – All one enormous happy family, well maybe.

It was Valentine's Day in Provincetown, but someone wasn't happy.

"Darling girl, please. Stop crying and tell me what the matter is! No. Stop it! How can I do anything to help if I can't understand a word you're saying?"

Andrea looked across to Miranda who was on her cell-phone to a sudden mystery caller. They were still at the beach house, confined to quarters because of the huge gale which had just sprung up, and Miranda's Italian novel had slipped to the floor from the futon sofa where she's been reading. She stood up and walked to the window to try to get a better signal.

Andy, who was playing with Matilda the puppy in front of the fire, tried to figure out who was on the phone. There seemed to be a lot of emotion coming down the line. Miranda eventually managed to get some sort of grip on the conversation, but Andy still had no idea who was calling.

"No. . . . .Not too late. . . . I am sure we can fix something. . . . It will be fine. . . . We can come over tomorrow. We're up on the Cape anyway . . . Yes . . . . No . . . . Let me call you back when you're calmer. Stop crying!"

She put the phone down from her ear, and shook her head slightly as if her ears were burning.

"Huh? What was all that about?"

"It's Cindy. She urgently needs to choose a wedding dress and is crying because she says she looks like a tea-pot. Her mother is insisting on traditional white, veil and everything, so Cindy wants me to step in and find something more suitable for a bride who will be eight months pregnant when she ties the knot. This marriage thing is obviously getting to her."

"Oh, that's a bit funny, you having to dress your ex-husband's new wife for her wedding to him! But I'm sure you're up to the challenge. Cindy was right to call you. Do you think Geoff put her on to the idea?"

Miranda laughed. She looked quite cheerful at the thought of finding Cindy something appropriate to wear for her wedding

"Maybe, but all our roles are rather fluid these days. She is even younger than you are, and I am certainly old enough to be the mother of the bride. Anyway, from what she's told me before, Cindy's own parent is not the most sensible of women."

"When are they planning to marry?"

"Saturday April 3rd."

"Wow, that's only six weeks away. I expect we're all invited. The twins will want to be part of it anyway, now that they don't hate Cindy any more. Do you think she will ask them to be bridesmaids?"

"We need to find out, diplomatically of course. It could get rather complicated. But Andy I've been thinking . . ." Miranda bent to pick up her novel off the floor where it had tumbled, and then closed it with a look of concentration on her face.

"What, Miri darling?"

"Do you realise as well, as well as Geoff and Cindy, just how close you and I are to getting married. We said May, didn't we?"

"Yes. Lilac time up here."

Andy started to hum, "We're going to the chapel, and we're gonna get married . . .. "

"But we've done nothing to organise it! Whatever have I been thinking of? I've been in a dream. We need to book the ceremony, and the venue, and send out the invitations, not to speak of the dresses! Where has my head been all these weeks?"

"On sabbatical, where it should be! Sweetie, calm down! We can sort it all out now, while we're up here in Provincetown. I know Nigel has already made a start on thinking about what he'll sort out for you to wear, and I don't really matter. "

"You certainly do! If anyone wears white well, it will be you. And you deserve it."

"Not exactly virginal."

"No, maybe, but you are certainly pure in heart and it is your first and only wedding day. You need a dress as lovely as you. You are very, very beautiful, don't you realise? On the other hand I think I might wear scarlet, with little horns and a trident."

"Enough of that nonsense! I would rather like to see you in cerulean, to match your eyes and my old sweater. How about that? Anyway we have this current holiday weekend to do all the necessary booking up here, and to find out about applying for a licence."

"Monday is Presidents Day. The Town Hall will be shut."

"Just for a day. We can look at some local venues in the meantime. But as for tomorrow, didn't you say something about going over to Boston, to sort out Cindy? Let's prioritize that first. I do think it's very sweet of her to want to cry on your shoulder, a change of tune for you both. Didn't she used to think you were an absolute dragon, while you told me she was a bimbo?"

"If I did, I apologize. That was before we met! Cindy is family now, going to be the twin's other step-mom, and the mother of their brother. Besides, I like the girl. She has spirit, and she's stopped Geoff drinking. "

"Is that confirmed, that it's a boy? "

"Oh yes. Geoff is tickled pink, even though he pretends not to be gender biased."

"It is high time for a boy in the family, according to Cassidy at least. So are we postponing the Italian trip? Geoff and Cindy can't easily have the twins with them for spring break as they planned, if she's so close to giving birth, and they've also just got married. They'll want a short honeymoon at least."

"Not a problem. My original plan was to take us all to Italy anyway. The twins are old enough to appreciate and remember everything. You don't mind them coming, do you?"

"Of course not. I adore them. We'd be very sad not having them with us."

"Then we'll work on that premise. I have in mind a road trip. Rome, Firenze, Milano, Venetia . . . "

"Sounds divine."

"I also promised Sophia we would try to visit her mother in Perugia. She lives in a retirement home there."

"So it's good we haven't booked our flights yet. But we should do it as soon as possible. The Easter weekend will be super busy, won't it?"

"Heck yes!"

"I like it when you talk like that, like a proper hayseed."

"I do it to amuse you, my darling. Or maybe you are just having a terrible influence on my vocabulary."

Matilda, the puppy, was meanwhile jumping up and down hoping to be let out the door, but the wind would be far too strong, and the sea was roaring up and down the beach like a hungry lion. Andy, who was now standing, picked her up into her arms and then pulled Miranda towards them both for a group hug.

"When the wind drops, I'll walk Tilly into town and pick up some brochures, and then tomorrow we can drive to Boston. It's only a couple of hours by road. Do you think it's time we had Wi-Fi installed here? If we were online properly we could research everything simply sitting by the fire."

"Yes, I suppose so. You had better put it on the list of to-dos. I've just enjoyed the isolation so far, of having you to myself. And it has been good for the girls to know that life can carry on without the internet."

Andy hugged her tighter.

"Kiss me!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm asking. And I love you."

"Magic words I used never to think I'd hear from your lips."

"I'll never stop saying them, not until the day I die."

"Hmm. I think you're slightly squashing Matilda."

"Shall I put her down on the floor?"

"That might be wise."

" . . . . . . . "

"Hmm. Shall we go to bed then, just for a little while?

". . . . . . . "

"Very well . . . if you insist."

So it was a full two hours later before Tilly got her walk into town, and it wasn't simply the weather causing the delay.

The following morning, after another lengthy phone conversation with Cindy, and then later with Geoff, Miranda and Andy set out in the Porsche to drive to their rambling old house on the outskirts of Boston. There the internet connection wasn't a problem, so Miranda settled down next to Cindy on the sofa.

She used her lap-top to show her a range of options from various designers, which she could have for a formal dress. She knew what the girl needed, one she could wear for the wedding, one which would look both stylish and elegant, and be comfortable smoothed over her bump. They settled on a couple of designers and Cindy chose the styles she liked the best.

"We need a fitting day of course. Can you manage a trip to New York sometime next week, and I'll set something up, some trips round these design houses?"

Miranda was in her element and for the first time in six months actually relished re-engaging with all the frivolities of fashion, which had once been her absolute obsession.

At the end, Cindy breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you so, so much. You've saved my life. Would Cass and Caro be my bridesmaids? I'd like them to do it anyway, but I also don't have any young nieces or sisters or anybody else."

"I'm sure they will. When you have chosen your dress, then we will think about theirs."

Andy broke in. "I'm sure they'd like to be involved in those decisions. They have quite good ideas themselves."

Miranda remembered the previous debacle over the Christmas concert, centred around her notion of putting her twins into Scottish kilts, and nodded her head.

"Of course. Why don't you call them yourself this evening, Cindy and ask them? They'd appreciate that, hearing it from you instead of just relayed through their old mother."

"I do love you, Miranda. You're so kind to me."

"Kindness is my middle name, isn't it, Andy?"

Andy had the temerity to laugh out loud.

"Yes Miranda, of course," she said drily. "Now what else do we have to sort out?"

And she started to write down a long and complicated list. It was definitely going to be a very busy spring, and she was already excited.

Miranda gazed on Andy's curly head of short chestnut hair bent over her notepad, and pondered again just how much she loved being with this carelessly graceful sprite of a girl. She visualised strolling with Andrea through the Forum in Rome, over the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and across the Piazza of San Marco in Venice. It would be their first trip to Europe as lovers, and it would be enchanting. Then it would be time for them to return to America, to get married! She couldn't be happier.

"Miranda," murmured Cindy on the sofa beside her.

"What?"

"Would you mind very much if we included my mother in our trip round the New York designers? I think she'd listen to your advice . . . She also still doesn't care at all for Geoff, but you might bring her round to what a good guy he really is."

Now it was Miranda's turn to nearly laugh out loud.

"If you think so, dear," was all she could manage to say. "If you're sure that would be helpful."

How her world had changed!

Andy caught her eye, and raised her eyebrows, but she said nothing. She had absolute faith in Miranda to achieve the impossible, and even twice on Sundays. Cindy's mother wouldn't know what she was up against, and they would all end up one enormous happy family, she was sure.


	2. Girls in White Dresses

**Chapter 2. Girls in white dresses.**

"When will your divorce be through and finally sealed? Isn't that our main starting date?"

Miranda and Andrea were driving back to Provincetown after their day visiting and cheering up Cindy in Boston, and Andrea was looking over a long list of tasks she'd already identified. She had her trusty reporter's pad on her lap while Miranda took the wheel. When she heard mention of the divorce, Miranda looked as though she was being forced to inhale a bad smell.

"Yes, and I must deal with it pretty pronto. I was assuming the end of this month, but everything seems to have been too quiet for comfort recently. I must talk to Deborah my attorney as soon as we get back to New York. She will be taking the holiday off tomorrow, so there's no point calling her beforehand."

"You've been very quiet about it. You don't have to shield me from unpleasant truths, honey."

"Well, none of it need concern you, my love. You are not even mentioned in the proceedings. He did try to counter-petition, but we blocked that pretty quickly. No, it's just a matter of scraping him off my shoes. I suspect money will help. It usually does."

"Shall I do the research on how we then proceed and actually register in Massachusetts to get married? In the meantime we can talk about the social side, how many people we want to invite, all that stuff. And the vows, are we going to write our own vows?"

Miranda rolled her eyes, and accelerated into the fast lane. "We could write each other's. That would be cute. I could put in yours that you will promise always to obey me, how about that?"

Andrea chuckled, and dared to put her right hand on Miranda's thigh. "Hmm. But what's good for the goose . . . you know? We're both often prone to disobedience when it suits us. Perhaps it's better if we miss out that section altogether."

"Get your hand off me, woman. You're distracting me. There's only one thing I need you to promise me."

"What's that?"

"That this will be my last wedding, that you will never leave me, however foul I am. If you leave me, I will die."

"A bit premature, even thinking like that, don't you think?"

Miranda suddenly went from laughter to seeming close to tears.

"I'm serious, Andrea, really serious. Don't marry me unless you can really mean it. I can think of a thousand reasons why you'd be sensible not to commit for ever, even now. But if you marry me, then not only my heart, but my whole life is in your hands. You have to understand that."

Andrea moved her hand, but only a little way north, to lightly soothe Miranda's chest. She leaned her head and rested it on her driver's shoulder, and whispered very calmly and softly into her ear.

"You do know my answer, don't you? I will marry you with the greatest happiness, and commitment, and one lifetime will never be enough to show you how much I love and adore you. I could never leave you. It would be like tearing out my own heart. Is that clear? Are we good now then?"

Miranda kept driving and looking forward, both hands on the wheel, but Andy saw her eyes fill with tears, and she nodded silently, before saying in one of her whispers, "Yes, we're good. Thank you honey."

And they drove home together through the February evening.

From then on, Miranda's life and her calendar began to get very busy indeed. Firstly she really badly wanted to find out if her brother Charles could come to the wedding, if his performance schedule might allow it. They had talked three or four times a week in the last month, and she knew he was booked to perform in New York again in March, but his dates in May were still unsure.

As soon as they were back at the town-house three days later, she curled up on the kitchen sofa and called him in Sydney where he was back home after a gruelling three months on the road.

"You're free from the 10th to the 20th? Wonderful."

"I'd cancel if necessary anyway. Wild horses won't drive me away. Can I play for you? It would be a privilege."

"Oh Charles, what a lovely thought. We'd be honoured. But there's something else as well. Caroline and Cassidy wrote me the sweetest little waltz as a Christmas present. It's a piano duet at the moment. If I emailed a copy to you, do you think you could look at it and maybe adapt it for cello? They would be so thrilled. You'd probably have to arrange it, smarten it up. But I think it sounds amazing for children of their age, and we could then have it at our reception."

"Miranda, send it through as soon as you can. Of course I'd be delighted. I'll bring it with me then when I come in March, OK? George and I will look at it together."

Miranda's heart swelled with happiness at the idea of her little girls' initiative might have further wings. When they had played it to her on returning belatedly from their father's over Christmas, she had been silenced at their loving gift, but her brother, a world renowned musician, could take it much further.

Then the house phone rang again, and she picked it up quickly, thinking maybe Charles had forgotten to say something important. But this time it was Jenny, Andy's Mom, so they were on the phone together for another twenty minutes talking about quite different things.

Jenny said, "Momma's date for her hip replacement has come through. It's next Tuesday. Andy said she wanted to come, and it would be helpful, because I am tied up at work for all of next week with a difficult set of casework. Momma will need someone here with her when she's discharged, if only to stop her being silly and overdoing things."

"Of course Andrea will want to come, and we'll arrange it. She's out with the twins just now, walking our new hound-dog, but she'll call you back."

Jenny kept Miranda talking. She wanted to know how her friend was doing, and Miranda actually confided in her about the more unsavoury side of her divorce proceedings which she hadn't wanted to spit out in front of Andy. Jenny then said something else, which threw up a whole new idea.

"You know you are planning to take the twins with you both to Italy, but why don't you ask them if they'd like come to Ohio and stay with me and Richard for the Easter Break. We'd love to have them, and we can organise horses for them both. I can take them riding, and also visiting with their cousins. Do you think they might like that, after their father's wedding?"

Miranda's brain worked overtime, assessing this very kind offer but she knew just what the twins' response would be. "I'm sure they'd love that, if you don't mind. It would make things a little simpler, if it's just Andy and me going to Italy this time. We'll discuss it as a family and then get back to you."

After the phone call, she picked up the large calendar which Andy had hung on the kitchen wall and turned the pages to April and May. So much to organise! She wondered when she'd had any time to go to work before. And the precious sabbatical year was already half over.

Pumpkin, growing fast and fluffing up as a young ginger long-furred cat, jumped up onto the counter in front of her and rubbed his head under her chin. For all his faults, he was a very tactile cat, who loved cuddles, and Miranda, despite all appearance to the opposite, shared this with him. She too loved to be fondled and caressed, especially by Andy. In this she and Pumpkin were as one.

The Italian trip had now to be booked. The twins, when they heard the news of the chance to spend ten days in darkest Ohio, literally jumped for joy. Miranda and Andy were both highly amused about how their tastes had changed from a year previously, when the idea of spending time out in rural America would have filled them with horror, or at least exaggerated expressions of boredom.

"Going to camp last August really worked wonders for them didn't it?" asked Andy later that night, after the twins' bedtime, and as she and Miranda sat making some firm plans round school semesters and public holidays.

"Yes, and don't forget how their absence worked wonders for you and me as well. It kicked off everything, me hauling you over here the evening before they went and asking you to do 'research' for me,"

"Yes, on entomology!"

"It was that night when I made a secret vow to get you in my bed, one way or other, even if it killed me. I remember you coming through the door, so warm, so pink, and slightly annoyed after I'd broken up your little drinks party with Sal. I could have eaten you alive."

"I know. We were building up to a crisis, weren't we? We couldn't have lasted much longer anyway, even if we hadn't gone to the French party together."

"I shall miss you terribly when you go to Ohio to be with your Momma. Do you realise, apart from that one horrible night when you were in hospital, we haven't been apart since we started."

"I know. But I'll call you every day. It will be for less than a week, and maybe I can get some writing done as well. Now then, when is Cindy coming down to New York, and will she stay with us?"

"Tomorrow, but she's bringing her mother and they'll have a stopover in a hotel together, she said. Do you want to come? You could look at dresses for yourself as well."

"No darling, I am going to write and catch up the hours I missed while we were away. I am sure between you and Nigel, you will sort out my wedding dress."

"I wish you were more excited about how gorgeous we can make you look."

"No, you don't, not really. We only need one diva and fashionista in this family. Though, have you noticed? Caroline has started looking at clothes with much more interest recently. I went through the sketches she has done with the paints I gave her for Christmas, and many of them are of girls in dresses!"

"'Girls in white dresses, with blue satin sashes.' Maybe I should take Caroline with me to choose your dress then."

"Yes, do that! She'd enjoy it. But bridesmaids dresses for Cindy and Geoff's wedding, they are the first thing you all need to decide on. They'll need making up."

"So much to do, and so little time to do it! Are we going to bed now, then?"

"Yes, Miranda. Just let me settle the animals in the kitchen for the night, and then I'll be yours."

Miranda smiled.

"Don't dawdle, will you? I hate it when people are late for important appointments."

Andrea said nothing, but her answer was in her expression.

Miranda smiled again and began to climb the stairs, slowly.

With luck Andy might catch her up before she reached the top.


	3. Going for Gold

Miranda's Enchanted April

Chapter 3. Going for gold.

It was Saturday morning. Andrea and Cassidy were off to the equestrian centre together, where Cassidy had started her preliminary course in horse care and riding, a Christmas present from Andrea. She could appreciate how the earnest little ten-year-old was falling headlong into the "pony-mad" phase she had lived through herself fifteen years before. Every moment not spent on the back of a horse, or mucking about in a stable was time wasted, and she enjoyed reliving those sweet years as she watched Cassie's little face rapt with happiness, as she pulled on her boots and adjusted her hard hat.

Miranda and Caroline watched them leave the house with mutual incomprehension at such enthusiasm, but Miranda appreciated having her second child to herself for a few hours. She was realising more and more that she had two very different daughters, even though they were identical twins, and she needed to treat them as individuals.

She had at least stopped rounding them up in her mind as "the Bobbsies" all the time anyway. Now she had Caroline alone, and they were going to do that archetypal American mom and daughter thing, clothes shopping!

"Are you sure you don't mind coming along to Cindy's fitting? You won't get bored?"

Caroline did the eye-rolling trick she had recently perfected. "Duh! 'Course not. I want to see what dress she chooses, and then how they can adjust it to cover Bumpy boy."

"Her Mom is coming as well. You'll get to meet your new step-grandma."

"I've already got two grandmas, and Granny Jen is my all-time favorite. I don't really need any more."

"But you will be polite and well-mannered won't you. And you can stop that eye-rolling nonsense right now. OK?"

"Sure Mommy. But please don't be mad at me. I thought we were going to have a lovely Saturday together . . . "

"Of course we are, sweetheart." And Miranda pulled Caroline into her arms and kissed her fondly. "I'm just enjoying this blessed period between you being a spoilt brat and an obnoxious teenager, which I'm sure will come along before too long. Saying "Duh" and eye-rolling are symptoms I don't want to see just yet, thank you."

"You are very bossy, Mom, but I do love you. So when are we meeting Cindy and her mother?"

Caroline had dressed in jeans and a hoodie over her cashmere polo neck sweater, but her clothes fitted her well, and the colour of her sweater matched her china-blue eyes.

"Eleven, at Saks. They are flying down from Boston right now, as Cindy's Mom has to work full-time on all the weekdays. She's not as lucky as I am to be on semi-permanent leave."

They cleared away the remains of breakfast, and left the house together in Miranda's Porsche. February was slowly drawing to a close, and the snow of January was now just a memory. Spring was on the way, and the florists' stalls outside the metro stations were already awash with blooms. The sky was blue, and the air was fresh. Miranda took the car into the underground parking-lot and they went up into the huge store together.

"Cindy is buying retail?"

Caroline sounded surprised.

"Saks has designer labels in plenty. But, yes in the end we decided to go this route, instead of going to individual houses. Her Mom wants to fund the dress, and by all accounts she's not very well off, so that's another reason I am relying on you to be extra sensitive and polite about their choices. I'll try to advise them according to their budget."

"You used to say everything that wasn't straight out of a designer's studio wasn't worth looking at."

Miranda nodded ruefully. "I did. I was being ridiculous, as I often used to be. I'm trying to be more sensible these days. Andy has set me straight on a lot of things."

"She has, hasn't she? But Mom, I have always loved you, even when you were as silly as anything. I will always love you. I think you are wonderful."

Miranda was standing behind Caroline on the escalator as she heard these heart-stopping words, produced so easily and so naturally from her little girl. She was deeply moved, but this wasn't the place to burst into maternal tears. As they stepped off on the relevant floor, she merely gave Caroline's young shoulders a brisk hug, and said "Ditto."

"Ditto? What does that mean?"

"It means I share your sentiments exactly. I agree. I think you are wonderful too."

"Ditto. That's a nice word. I shall start to use it. Cass and I are like, "Ditto." We like the same in most things."

"Yes, but not quite in everything. She would hate this, for example, coming to look at wedding dresses."

"I know. She's mad on horses at the moment. But it's only a phase, I heard Andy say. I expect she'll grow out of it!"

Miranda roared with laughter at this last gem. "Come on honey, let's meet our friends. Cindy has just messaged me to say they are here."

Cindy had been offered a seat in the bridal suite at the top of Sachs Fifth Avenue women's fashion department, and sitting beside her was a person who obviously was her mother. They were the same height and equally fair, but Cindy's mother hadn't weathered so well.

She looked a flustered, care-worn soul, with not very well applied make-up and slightly pink blonde hair. She was also rather surprisingly, dressed almost completely in pink as well. Miranda realised at once that she was meeting someone who believed in femininity with all its foibles and folderols, for whom this day, choosing her Cindy-doll's wedding dress, was immensely important.

She remembered Cindy's comment from the week before, "Miranda you are so kind!", and decided to try to live up to that unlikely compliment.

"Hi, Cindy and this lady is your Mom?"

"Delores. But people call me Della."

"Della! How wonderful to meet you. Didn't Perry Mason have a brilliant secretary called Della? It's a lovely name."

This was pure Dale Carnegie, but it worked perfectly. Della immediately looked happier. Caroline meanwhile grinned in a friendly, non smirky manner to Cindy, and asked her, "How are you feeling? Is Bumpy behaving?"

"Not too bad. He's started to kick like mad though. Here, he's doing it now. You can feel it if you like."

"Caroline rather nervously put her hand on the large hill in front of Cindy's body and gave a little squeal of surprise. "Wow, I can feel him in there. Do you think he can hear what we're saying?"

"I expect he can," said Miranda.

She added, "That's why you should always be nice to expectant mothers and not say rude things. Shouting upsets babies and can lead to all sorts of problems later, when they are born. Well that's my theory anyway."

She was remembering all the shouting and worse, directed at her poor mother when she had been expecting the twin babies, and realised, just then, that maybe her own tendency to panic went right back to the time when she was in the womb herself, before she was born. Past and present suddenly coalesced together in her brain.

But Caroline was very much in the present day and said calmly, "I'm not going to shout at Cindy, and she's not going to shout at me. We're really cool, aren't we? I'm so excited to be looking at dresses with you."

Della looked both surprised and impressed at how delightful this child was, and how unlike the monster she had originally been led to expect. Miranda, whose relationship to herself she was still trying to establish in her mind, also seemed a kind woman.

"Kind" Miranda was now leading them all forwards to meet with the manager of the wedding dress studio, a very tall girl, probably an ex-model, who obviously recognised her and seemed almost over-awed to have her there at all. Della gathered up her five foot nothing height with courage and followed the others in. This whole miserable mess of a shot-gun wedding for her darling daughter now looked to have some glimmers of light about it after all.

And so it turned out. The four of them had a very pleasant two hours, being shown a variety of dresses, which were indeed, quietly and cunningly intended to accommodate pregnant brides. Various designers had done a splendid job. It must not have been that uncommon a commission after all. Cindy looked much more encouraged, especially as Miranda shouldered the additional responsibility of gently steering Della away from the idea of wedding-cake white.

"Cindy's a natural blonde, such a pretty girl, but don't you think white might make her naturally fair complexion look a little washed out? How about a light gold, which will bring out the shine to her hair? And it's so pretty, it would be shame to cover it with a veil, don't you agree?""

"But I always imagined her in white, from when she was a little girl, with maybe pink flounces, and pink for the bridesmaids."

Caroline stepped in here, not rudely, but firmly. "I don't think Cass and I would do well in pink, not with our hair colour. I do think Cindy would look fantastic in gold, like a queen."

That word brought Della round in a magical way, and they settled on the perfect dress. Cindy almost cried with relief as the order was made, and her mother paid the deposit.

"The final fitting will take place ten days before your wedding, so we can get the measurements exactly correct," said the Sachs manager. "You will look wonderful. Congratulations on your coming event, both of them! As token of thanks for choosing us to supply your wedding dress, will you allow us to include shoes with the dress at no extra charge?"

Miranda said nothing, but she had a hunch that her presence was the reason for this sudden largesse. A complimentary mention in Runway would never come amiss for these big retailers.

Cindy said, "Thank you, that would be fantastic. But can I wait to choose them until I return? My poor feet are swelling more each week. I shall probably need size 12s before I finish."

"Whatever you think best, madam. Don't worry, we keep an immense stock in store."

Miranda then turned to Cindy and Della. "Time for a spot of lunch, don't you agree? My treat. And if you trust me, can Caroline and I take on the task of choosing matching bridesmaids' outfits a little later? I think we've done enough for now, and Cindy looks exhausted."

Cindy replied, "Lunch and somewhere to sit down does sound fantastic. Thanks. We had a very early start to get to the airport in time."

"Well I know a superb roof-top restaurant. Follow me!"

Over lunch, while Cindy and Caroline amused each other by sharing pictures on their I-phones on one side of the table, rather more like sisters than step-mom and step-daughter, Miranda learned a little more about why Della had not yet fallen for Geoff's charms.

"Of all the boys, she could have had," whispered Della, "why did she have to fall for someone in his mid-fifties who looks far too like her father for my liking? You know, my ex-husband was a lawyer, and I was his secretary. He left us both when Cindy was only five, and has now disappeared entirely. He also left me very badly off, so I have had to work full-time ever since."

"Maybe she was looking for a father-figure, but Cindy does seem her own woman. She's been very firm with Geoff, which has done him a world of good."

"But he's been married three times already! I did hope for something better for my precious only child."

"I understand. I really do. But I was to blame for the failure of our marriage, just as much as Geoff, and for the last eight years, well, he's just been rather lost. He will look after Cindy brilliantly, don't worry. He really loves her, and she'll also have all the rest of us to support her. She's joining a very strong extended family right now."

"Well, it's all a bit unconventional, isn't it, you know, your situation?"

This was as far as Della dared go to judge the bizarre lifestyle of the woman beside her.

"Maybe yes. But it's what I realise I need and want. Wait till you meet my Andrea. You'll realise then why we all adore her. She is my perfect partner, my soul mate. And she is scarcely older than Cindy. You see, age is really irrelevant, once you meet the right one."

"Hmm. Well I am trying not to worry."

"Wait till you see your baby grandson. You'll be over the moon."

"I'm only forty-eight. It's a bit young to be a granny."

"Well, that has nothing to do with Geoff. You'd be faced with that reality whoever Cindy married. She's very keen on having this baby, isn't she? She didn't have to get pregnant."

"You're right, and very sensible, and kind. I must just stop fretting."

"Good, now would you like an ice-cream for dessert?"

"Only if you will."

"Yes, I think we could all indulge for once. I am very fond of double chocolate mint, myself."

So they finished the meal with ice-cream, never a bad idea.


	4. Just Exchange

Miranda's Enchanted April

Chapter 4.

"Don't forget to call me, just to say all's well, as soon as you land."

"Of course not. Look darling, how many times have we flown? Nothing will happen. I'll be in Cincinnati by mid-afternoon."

"Face-time me, as well, this evening. Talk to me in person."

"As soon as I get home from the hospital. I'll give you an update. Momma's operation will already have started, so she will be conscious by this evening. Mom and I will both call you, but it may be 9pm."

"I don't care how late it is, just do it before you go to bed. I wish I could come with you."

Miranda was standing with Andy just by the checking-in desks for the internal flights at JFK airport. She had driven her there, along with her battered old carry-on bag, and was putting off the evil hour when they would have to part company. Miranda presented her usual immaculate and diva-like self to the outside world, but Andy could tell she was approaching a mini-meltdown. She had that wild distracted look in her eye which usually meant trouble.

Disregarding the crowds milling around them, Andy put her arms round Miranda in a tight hug and kissed her passionately on the mouth.

"Listen! You mustn't worry, because then I will worry about you! There is really no need to fret! And I'll be back before you know it. You have so much to do, anyway to sort out the wedding details. I've left you the check lists and I'll be clocking in regularly to make sure you're on target. OK?"

Miranda nodded. She wanted Andy to kiss her again, and not be diverted into another long list of instructions.

"One more."

Andrea knew what she meant, and kissed her again.

"You drive me wild, you know that."

"Hey, that's why we're getting married."

"Back in Ohio, you'll probably forget all about me. You'll be home, with your school friends, with Momma and your parents. You won't even remember what I look like in a day or two."

"Stop it, Miranda! Now!"

Andrea pulled herself up to her full height, and mustered all her inner dominatrix powers. At times it was the only way to deal with Miranda, to subdue her dragon when it began to get fired up.

"Look, if you behave like this any longer, I shall get really cross, OK? I'll miss you too, but at least I'm not behaving like a baby in public."

"Sorry." Miranda looked down at her boots, and sniffed.

"Good. Now I have a little something for you, a goodbye present."

Miranda looked back up quickly, rather encouraged and feeling instantly forgiven. She always liked presents, and Andrea was very good at choosing them.

Andy wrapped her arms round her mistress again and then pressed a little parcel into her hand.

"Bye, darling. And I'll call you when I land just as I promised. Now I must run!"

Miranda watched her dash away through the doors into Security, and was left holding the little package. She decided to fortify herself with a strong cup of coffee, and headed for the airport Starbucks outlet.

Andrea had been clever. Wondering what her present was had distracted Miranda from their actual moment of parting, and she could now trust herself not to make a spectacle of herself by crying.

Why Andy's short visit home turned her into a blubbering wreck, she really didn't fathom, except that it was all part of her recovery year's necessary hard work. Once they were married her nerves would settle, surely? Since she was a tiny child, they had never caused her so much embarrassment and bother.

The hospital room was still in semi-darkness when Andrea slipped in beside her parents who were both sitting by Momma's bed, waiting for her to come round after her hip replacement operation. As well as calling Miranda from the arrivals lounge, she had also texted them to say she'd landed safely and would grab a taxi over to the hospital, and they were waiting for her.

"Everything's fine so far," whispered Jenny. "But of course we'll know more later, when she comes to. They say she may feel nauseous from the anaesthetic to begin with, but it should settle."

"Hello, darling," also whispered Richard, still in his dark suit from the day's most recent court-room battle. "Lovely to see you. If you're here with your Mom, I'll get on home and let the dogs out, if that's all right. We can talk this evening."

So, no sooner had she barely said Hello, than Andy saw her father slip away and disappear down the corridor.

"He had been here for at least an hour," apologised Jenny. "Never good with hospitals."

"I know it! Some people never change."

Andrea sat down in the second visitor's chair and stretched her arms above her head. Jenny could see clear signs of exhaustion in her beautiful eyes.

"Good flight, darling?"

"Not bad, but it certainly is good to finally get here. You can go for a walk yourself if you need a break. Momma still looks fast asleep."

Andrea gazed at her grandmother, these days such a tiny woman and making only a small mound in the bed. She had been taller in Andrea's childhood, a strong, powerful woman who could ride well, chop a cord of wood, and mend the roof shingles as fast as any man. But now she looked troublingly fragile.

Jenny replied, "No, I don't need to be anywhere just yet but here. Let's wait together quietly until she wakes. It's a privilege to be still, with you beside me, just for a while."

So the two younger women held their vigil beside their family matriarch, and Andrea felt simply so grateful she could have made the trip. She hoped all was as well at home in New York. Miranda had expressed her delight at the little present she'd given her, and said she had driven home safely, so this, their first few days apart from one another in seven months, seemed at least to have started well.

In the town-house, when the twins came in with Cara at the end of their school day, they both immediately noticed a three inch high little crystal bear sitting on their mother's desk.

"This is nice," said Cassie. "From Andy?"

"Yes, she says he's to help me keep my pieces of paper, lists and the like, from flying all over the study. He's a paperweight, quite heavy."

"He's cute," said Caroline.

"Yes, useful and decorative," replied her mother. "Andy is so thoughtful. But she'll be gone for a week or more, so we must just be brave and keep our spirits up."

"Cara has made lasagne for dinner", Caroline said. "That will cheer us up, and then, can Cassie and I talk to you about our bridesmaid's dresses? I've done some sketches already."

"You have? Like a proper designer? I was about your age, or a little older when I first started being interested in fashion, not that I knew anything about it of course. But you, even growing up in the middle of it all, I've never noticed you be as taken by it as you have been lately. Has anything special brought this on?"

Caroline sat down on the sofa in her mother's study, while Cassie collapsed on the floor like a rag-doll. She had already learned to fall gracefully off a horse, and appeared to be practising.

"I have just decided to take your work and the world of fashion a bit more seriously. Now that you're not at Runway all day, every day, it's stopped being a house of horrors in my mind, and I'm beginning to want to know more about it. Those wedding dresses we saw in Saks store last Saturday were seriously awesome."

Miranda could see that "seriously" was becoming Caroline's word of the week. "Committed" was firmly in her core vocabulary already, and she lived it as well. Her cello and piano practice sessions never faltered. She had remarkable focus for a child so young.

"Darling, so why don't you fetch me your sketch book now, so I can look through your pictures and ideas, and then we can all discuss them later?"

"Great. I'll go fetch it down now. I need to practise my cello then until dinner time. Are you coming upstairs, Cass? Can you play the piano part for me on my current piece?"

Cassie peeled herself off the carpet and jumped up. The sisters left together, and when she received the sketch pad, Miranda sat back with her shoes off, and her feet up, looking through Caroline's sketches.

Andy had been quite correct. These were 'seriously' good for a ten year old, and showed real promise. Then Pumpkin marched in, definitely looking cross, and jumped up onto her knee, dislodging the drawing pad, and even knocking it to the floor.

"I know! You want to ask where Andy has disappeared to. I'm sorry about it, but you will have to put up with just me and the girls for a week. We will all miss her, but she is doing good work in Ohio."

Pumpkin meowed and rubbed his head on her hand. When she retrieved the sketch-book he allowed her to read it again, as long as it was above him so he could stretch and nestled tightly into her lap.

Andy's good work consisted of reading the local paper to her grandmother who had come back to consciousness, but was finding her new hip very painful as she left the pleasant dreams of the anaesthetic induced sleep. It was still two hours before she was due any more pain-killers.

Hearing Andy read out the local obituaries was taking her mind off the soreness. Jenny had gone a little time earlier, once she had seen her mother's recovery was on track, and she'd return later to visit once more and then take Andy home with her.

Andy knew Jenny had returned to her downtown office, grappling with difficult cases of child abuse and working as hard as she ever had. No-one, not even Miranda, had quite such a Protestant work ethic as her mother, on behalf of all the poor kids being shunted in and out of foster care, and also in the group homes which housed the "hard to place" youngsters.

There wasn't an example of cruelty to children or neglect which Jenny had not seen in her long career, but she rarely brought mention of the work home. How she managed to stay cheerful, Andy hardly knew, but she did. She was eternally kind, calm and strong. Only when facing up to the abusers, and sometimes bureaucratic indifference towards children, did the fire in her heart flare up to scorch her opponents. Andy tried her best to emulate her mother in most things. She was her role model in so much.

A voice from the bed interrupted Andrea's reverie.

"Who was that? The name you just mentioned, darlin'?"

"Oliver Plunkett. Died aged eighty four."

Momma sniffed. "He was in my class in our country school when I was small. He used to call me Amelia Badelia and tied my boot laces together once so I fell over when the teacher asked me to stand up and read. Well he's gone. I don't have to waste any more time hating him now."

"Momma! Do you hate many people?"

"Oh, not what you'd call hating, exactly. There's just a few round here I wouldn't mind reading about in that newspaper column. The trouble is, when you live in a neighbourhood all your life, you get small-minded. You know too much about a few things, and not enough about the world. I would love to travel, like your Miranda has, but I guess I may be too old."

"Once you have your new hip working properly, you could travel more. We could take you some places. It was lovely to see you turn up in Laguna for Miranda's birthday. Did you enjoy it?"

"Oh, it was wonderful. She is such a treasure. And so beautiful. I could have just sat there and looked at her all day. I can't wait until your wedding. Do we even know the time and place yet? "

"I know. I'm sorry we've been so tardy. We have had to wait for Miranda's divorce to be finalised. The invitations will be coming out by early next week."

"YOU know those friends of yours in Laguna, that Artist lady and her partner?"

"Lee and Gloria? Well, they are Miranda's old friends really."

"They asked me if I'd like to come to your wedding as their guests, and then take a vacation up in Maine with them. Apparently Gloria comes from up there."

"That would be a really good idea. Will you accept?"

"Thinkin' about it. You know I've never had gay women friends before, only Jenny, the love of my life. It's a new feeling."

"I should go for it, Momma. They are great women, and I know Lee has loads of money, so there would no need to be embarrassed about accepting their hospitality. They obviously liked you as soon as they met you."

"They were kind of chatty. What is it when you recognise people on your wave-length, there's a word . . . "

"Oh Gaydar, like radar. That's what people say. I'm so happy you had time to make friends with them. Lee is making a picture of me for Miranda. She'll bring it with her. I just hope I'm not naked in it. Miranda did threaten to hang it over the mantelpiece if it's a nude."

"You're a beautiful girl, inside and out. Nothing to be ashamed of anywhere, darling."

Her grandmother's words echoed a comment Miranda had made a couple of weeks earlier, and Andy remembered how sweetly her lover had expressed just how much she meant to her, had always meant to her. Wouldn't the world be more straightforward if people could just say out loud if they liked someone? She and Miranda had played games with each other for a whole six months before they'd come out. Fear of rejection was such a pernicious thing.

Momma was now sinking back into a sleep, and Andy quietly closed the newspaper, and sat beside her in peace, thinking all the time about Miranda, her saltiness and wit, but also her adorable ability to express the deepest love. Why they should be gifted with such a surprising mutual attraction she wasn't sure. They were different in almost every respect, but Miranda was her true soul-mate, and there wasn't anything she wouldn't do to look after her and shield her from harm. And she knew Miranda felt the same.

It was like an old 16th century poem by Sir Philip Sydney she had studied in English Literature. "My true-love hath my heart and I have his. By just exchange, one for the other given."

And she was still trying to remember the rest of the poem when her mother came by once again, to take her home.


	5. Toings and Froings, Comings and Goings

"So we've all decided on Ivory dresses with gold sashes and gold pumps. I think they'll perfectly match the bride's outfit, and won't scream against the twins' hair colour."

Miranda carefully avoided the dreaded word, "Ginger," having heard it enough herself as a child with her long auburn braids. Cass and Caro's red tints were even brighter than hers had been.

Her friend Sophia, the erstwhile Italian teacher who now just liked to come round to breathe in the captivating atmosphere of Miranda's home and revel in her company, looked at the finished designs on the kitchen table. It was a school day and the children were safely away at their classes.

"How did you manage to get these pictures transformed into dresses?"

"Oh, I know some excellent private dressmakers. One of them had space in her schedule, and the clothes will be finished by the end of the week. At least my girls aren't changing shape every seven days, unlike poor Cindy. We've had the fittings done now. I like the outfits. They are very demure, with long sleeves and brocade and have a slight nod back to medieval princesses."

"And Caroline came up with the design? She must be very talented."

"I think so, but of course I'm prejudiced! Now let me show you our planned itinerary for Italy, so you can write to your mother and let her know when to expect us in Perugia."

Sophia looked very wistful. "Si, Perugia is a beautiful city on the hill-tops. I am so grateful to you for making a detour to visit my mother. It is twenty years since I was there."

"But you are planning a trip later this summer, aren't you. Make those reservations. I can help you out if finance is a big problem."

"You are so good to me."

Miranda started to make coffee, and reverted to Italian. Learning the language was after all the reason she had met Sophia in the first place. But She had to admit to herself just how much Sophia had become a "project" for her.

She had long had the ambition to bring the woman out of her depressed middle-aged slump and release her inner spark. Over the last five months she had subtly influenced her to lose twenty pounds, brighten up her hair tone, improve her skin-care and take more exercise.

"Spiv", or Tony, Sophia's previously slobbish husband, had also bucked himself up, and now worked hard in Manhattan as a chef at a new, award winning restaurant. He had dropped a few rolls of fat round his belly as well, partly through walking back and forth to two Metro stations twice a day, and cutting down on the booze.

After talking some more about Italy, and the best way to book flights, Sophia said, "And what about you? How are you managing without Andy?"

Miranda passed her the little mug of black expresso she liked, and her shoulders visibly drooped.

"Very badly. She has been in Ohio for ten days now, nursing her grandmother, but we talk every evening. It isn't the same though. Even the pets miss her."

Sophia looked down at the tiny white pup and the ginger kitten who had settled their differences and now shared a basket under the table. They looked much less troubled than Miranda did though.

"When is she returning?"

"She says in a few days, when she has finished her book! She is writing a novel, and is close to completing the first draft. I do understand. When she is here, I am always distracting her. I know. I am very selfish. But I miss her so much."

Sophia grinned. "Then why don't you just go and surprise her? Take a trip to Ohio. You have Cara here to care for your girls. Just take off. Do what your heart tells you."

"Well, I would like to see Momma, her grandmother for myself. I am very fond of her as well. Maybe I could go. Do you think Andrea would mind?"

Sophia rolled her eyes, "The girl worships you. Of course she won't mind. Take a flight later today. You could be there for dinner!"

"Yes, OK, I will! But in that case I need you to drink your coffee and scram. I have a heap of things to do. But thanks for your advice. You've given me just the necessary courage."

Sophia didn't mind being bustled out of the door. She could see that her friend was now seriously excited. "Same time next week?"

"Yes, if you can come. I'll have my girl back with me then. She'll sort out your family vacation. She can do anything!"

They exchanged doubles kisses, and parted. This was another small change Miranda had noticed in herself since the advent of Andy. Her lover had taught her how to connect, how to be real. Air kisses were out, and if she genuinely felt affection for someone she could show it. Touching other human beings was OK, not anathema as it had been in the past.

She found as a result she was sending out attraction vibes to people, not repelling them. Even Emily, who had called round the previous evening, had appeared to feel this strange change in Miranda's micro-climate, and warmed up as a result.

Emily needed Miranda's advice, and help. She and Serena hoped to marry, soon! Could Miranda possibly find out if this was possible if you were just a visitor to Massachusetts, and if residency mattered, could they take up her previous offer and stay at the beach cottage before the wedding?

This was a very bold request, but her love for Serena pushed Emily forward into waters through which she had never swum before. Miranda's response had been totally positive, even merry. Her main concern seemed to be what the girls expected to wear, and could she help dress them?

"Oh . . . yes, of course. It would be an honour to have you . . . "And Emily found herself swept up into an affectionate hug from her old boss. She couldn't believe it, as she explained later to Serena.

"It is Miranda we're talking about here?" scoffed Serena, raising a perfect eyebrow, and stopping half way through cleaning her immaculately white teeth.

"Yes, she's acting like everyone's fairy godmother these days. I just hope she doesn't have a breakdown and revert to normal before we get to the wedding."

"She won't. It is amazing what being in love does for you. Look how charming even you have become, Querida? And the swearing percentage in your vocabulary has gone right down to a little bitty number."

"Fuck yes! I suppose it has. Oh well," and Emily had then allowed Serena to envelope her in a long spearmint flavoured kiss.

Later that evening, six hundred and forty-five miles away, Andy and Momma were taking a slow walk together round the perimeter of the family living room. Jenny and Richard were both out, so the house was quiet. Momma was still on two crutches, but she was putting more and more weight on her right leg, and the healing process was going well.

Andy had enjoyed her quiet stay back home which reminded her of all the years when Momma had shared the raising of her with her over-stretched parents. She had a special bond with her grandmother. Now she understood better why that might have been, and it was also Momma who had always most keenly encouraged her writing.

Andy was nervous now though. She'd printed off a chapter or two of her novel and had asked Momma to read them.

"What do you think? Might it sell?"

"Oh it will sell, catfish. It's pretty steamy, isn't it? But the main thing is, are you proud of it? Is it honest, and from your heart? That's important."

"I hope so. Yes, I think so. But what do you think?"

"Oh, I enjoyed every sentence. You will be famous one day, darlin', mark my words. You just have the gift."

"Oh, Momma, thank you. I know you'd always be honest. You are like Miranda in that regard. Shall we stop now? I think you've walked far enough."

Just as they stopped their indoor walk, and Momma had sat down again in her upright rocker, they heard a car draw up outside.

"Who the heck is that, come fussing us this time of night?" Momma said. "Go and take a look, honey."

And Andrea went across to the front door and pulled it open.

Astonishment and delight took equal stage across her face. Miranda was paying off a cab driver, and turned towards the light as the car sped away into the darkness.

"Miri! How wonderful! But how did you get here? Why didn't you call and tell me you were coming?"

Any doubts about the sensibleness of her journey, which had been plaguing her all the way over, now left Miranda completely, as Andy pulled her tightly towards her and kissed her very thoroughly on the mouth.

"Hey, you're chilly. Come in by the fire!"

"It was a spur of the moment thing. I just couldn't bear being parted from you for a moment longer, and Sophia said, "Why don't you just go?" So here I am."

"And most welcome you are, too," chipped in Momma. "Come here and kiss me. You are a sight for sore eyes, I can tell you. Andrea has been so bossy, making me keep to the physical therapy and marching me up to bed real early. It will be great to have a sensible adult to talk to!"

The three women sat together by the fire, Momma in her rocking chair, and Andy and Miranda unashamedly cuddling on the sofa. Miranda filled them in with all the various developments back home. Weddings seemed to be filling up the calendar thick and fast.

"But you still don't have a date for yours?" sniffed Momma.

"Sorry, no," said Miranda. "My pesky divorce is causing the delay, but we'll know soon. It will be sometime soon after May 10th, anyway."

Andy took her left hand and compared their matching engagement rings. "I really don't mind when it is. We are already betrothed, isn't that a lovely word?"

"Well I certainly do want to know. Your friends Gloria and Lee have called again, wanting me to take a vacation with them afterwards, so I need to get fighting fit for that. I need to know how long I've got."

And Momma poked at the carpet with her good leg. It looked as though she had decided to take up Lee's invitation.

Miranda kept smoothing down Andrea's tousled curls and looking at her face. "Such a messy child," she murmured. "I might have known you'd forget to brush your hair, the moment you were out of my sight."

"But you are pleased to see me?" teased Andy.

"Oh, yes," murmured Miranda. "I am very pleased to see you, very pleased indeed."

They stayed together in Ohio for two more days, then the weekend arrived, when Jenny, Richard and Margot could all keep watch over Momma, and Andy was released from her willing Florence Nightingale role.

Miranda and Andy flew back to New York, with Andy's finished novel safely caught on her lap-top, as well as on a data stick for back-up, and the next two weeks were taken up with the tedious but essential tasks of editing it.

March rushed by with a plethora of meetings and fittings, with Miranda disappearing at regular intervals to talk to her lawyer, These sessions must have been stressful, for Andy caught her once outside in their tiny back yard smoking a cigarette, and the contents of the bottle of scotch on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard also seemed to be going down. But as March slid into April, at last they had a firm date for their wedding, May 15th, and everything was fully organised for Geoff and Cindy's nuptials up in Boston.

That wedding went off very well. Caroline and Cassidy rose to the occasion in every sense. Miranda thought they even looked taller and more mature in their identical, very graceful dresses. She and Andy sat next to Geoff's parents through the ceremony, as the people she actually knew best, and for the longest time.

Cindy's mother wore pink, with a very large hat, and did weep profusely, but at least she made it through the ceremony without too much despair. Cindy, being only an inch or two taller than her young attendants, had opted for high heels, having found some beautiful shoes to fit her, and the cleverness of her wedding-dress design did disguise the fact of her imminent delivery.

"Geoff looks very happy," whispered Andrea into Miranda's left ear, "and much less red in the face than he used to."

"Definitely off the booze. He's also lost fifteen pounds. I'm very proud of the boy. Good luck to them both."

Geoff's mother gave an audible sigh, and whispered from her other side, while the final hymn was being sung.

"I still think he was wrong to leave you, with those two small babies. I still look on you as his proper wife, you know. But Cindy seems a nice girl. Let's hope it works out for them."

"Yes, Helen, we all do. And don't worry for me. I'm gay, no wonder Geoff and I weren't happy together! Don't blame him. Will you come to Andy's and my wedding on the 15th of next month? I'd love it if you can be there."

Helen Priestly, a New England matriarch of the old school, wondered what the world was coming to. But she genuinely loved Miranda, and the beautiful young thing next to her seemed reassuringly normal. She patted Miranda's elegant knee, and said, "Of course, Geoff's father and I, we'd both love to come. We're so happy for you."

Nothing more was said, but Miranda knew how much her in-laws had detested Stephen. She should have listened to her first mother-in-law's advice before marrying him! She'd been a fool, and dishonest with him as well. They'd been well-matched in deceit if she was truly honest.

Two days after Geoff and Cindy's wedding, Richard Sachs actually left his native turf and willingly flew to New York to collect the twins. It was the first time he had visited the town-house, and Andrea, as well as Miranda, made an absurd fuss of him.

He felt like the prodigal son, in that he didn't deserve such courtesies, but made up for all his earlier churlishness and prejudice, by being gruffly charming. He liked the house with its fresh, modern feel, and wonderful art works, and he liked the bouncing little girls.

The twins had packed and were all set for a ten day stay over the Easter break. This time Cassie did manage to pack her western riding boots, her chaps and her fringed suede jacket! Caroline also had her cello, safely encased in a rigid carrying case. Miranda and Andrea, and Cara waved them away in a taxi with hugs and kisses, and then Cara turned to reassure the other women that she was indeed, very happy to take on the house-sitting and pet-care, she'd done before.

Now it was Miranda and Andy's turn to leave for the airport. Their flight to Rome left in three hours, and would take all night. Andrea forgot nothing this time, and had all their insurance papers, reservations, and relevant phone numbers safely in her carry-on briefcase.

Roy appeared as if by magic exactly on time, and they settled happily in the back seat of the Lexus. As the city slipped past them they both remembered that steamy first night of their affair, shackled together and trying hard to hide the fact. Andy looked sideways at Miranda, and received an answering grin. This was their first long trip together since that August night, they were escaping to Italy, just the two of them, and it was going to be enchanting! Well, how could it not be?


	6. The eternal city

The Eternal city

It was sunny in Rome when they landed, but windy, brisk, typical April weather. The streets were thronged with tourists from all over the world, and as Miranda and Andy rode from the airport in their chauffeured car, the spring breezes made the long lines of cypress trees along the avenues dance in the chilly air. "April can certainly be a lion or a lamb," remarked Miranda.

The hotel they had booked into was one of the oldest and grandest in the centre of the city, and while Andrea was very excited to be in Rome, cradle of Western Europe's civilisation, her body was also looking forward to sinking beneath the sheets and catching up on a night's rest. Sleeping on the plane was never her thing, although she had dozed for an hour or two between watching several very forgettable films.

Miranda had snuggled under a blanket, put on her eye-mask, grabbed Andrea's right hand in her left and slept her way across the Atlantic. Andrea had enjoyed the feeling of being captured, safe in the grasp of her mistress. It reminded her of their first hours together as lovers. The warm curve of her fingers, and the press of Miranda's thumb against her palm kept her firmly in her place, but she was also hungry, and took the offered refreshments gladly. Miranda nestled closer against her shoulder but didn't stir as Andy negotiated her way through several drinks and a three course meal with just one hand.

Having slept like a baby for eight hours, Miranda had no desire to go straight to bed when they arrived in Rome, tempting as that thought normally was when she had Andrea within arm's length, but she could see the shadows under Andy's eyes and the obvious weariness in her face. She bundled her through the checking in process and then led her to their room on the second floor of the palatial hotel. The dimensions of it resembled a palace, which is exactly what it had been. A huge gold-framed mirror faced the end of the extravagantly large bed, and the en-suite bathroom had a deep claw-footed tub as well as a large shower.

"Magnificent!" murmured Andrea as she examined all the luxurious fittings, the drapes at the windows and swags of satin and velvet above the bed. She sat on edge of the bed and removed her heels. She'd dressed for Miranda, in an outfit Miranda of course had supplied a few weeks previously, but she didn't want to crease the suit jacket or well fitted straight skirt. She began to shed them.

Miranda could see her darling was automatically preparing for a long siesta. It was early afternoon in Rome now but Andy wouldn't be fit for much until dinner –time, despite being half her age.

"Take a nap, sweet heart and we'll start our sightseeing properly this evening."

Their cases had been delivered. Andrea felt guilty she wasn't more enthusiastic about opening them, but the huge white pillows looked so inviting.

"What will you do to amuse yourself, Miri? I'm so sorry I'm not more fun."

"Nonsense! I will unpack and then take a walk. I might book us some tickets for the central sights like the Colosseum and Pantheon while I'm out. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"If you're sure," murmured Andy, her head already back on the pillows and her eyes shut. By the time Miranda had even opened her suitcase she was fast asleep, on top of the bed covers.

Miranda unpacked, showered, changed, reapplied necessary make-up and did her hair into its normal fountain of silver-spun waves all within thirty minutes of so. She pulled a light cover up over Andy's shoulders, dropped a kiss on her cheek, and picking up her bag and room key-card, slipped out of the room. She was wearing walking shoes with a modest two inch heel, and felt ready for a wander, and maybe find some food. By sleeping she had missed a meal or two on the plane. The enticing cafes round the Piazza de Popolo lured her onwards.

Miranda had been to Rome five or six times in the last thirty years, her very first visit coming as a result of working as a wardrobe mistress for the circus back in 1971. She remembered little from that first encounter with all the glorious history and the architecture, and she didn't recall even getting inside any of the famous churches and the Vatican City.

But with her Romanian friend, Pavia, she had walked round the Colosseum and through the Forum, and they had ended up at the Trevi Fountain. Now, after an excellent light lunch of a salad decked with artichoke hearts and anchovies and a glass of Prosecco, she decided to wander back down memory lane.

Rome never changed, and yet was always changing. One thing remained constant though, the endless roar of the traffic, swirling round the great piazzas and providing an unceasing backdrop to every conversation. But the architecture was another constant, always magnificent, uplifting and elegant. How come the Italians seemed to have effortless style?

Miranda realised that all her previous visits had been work related, and all scheduled round fashion shows and the latest Italian innovations. They had been pushing forward, never giving her enough time to reflect and enjoy appreciating the past. Tomorrow, she would take Andrea round the classical sights and the following two days they could move steadily forward through the art of succeeding centuries. There was so much to see in Rome, so many masterpieces. Every corner turned held a new glory. And of course there were also the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. She had allocated three days here, but it surely wouldn't be enough time. They must return.

Miranda's feet had taken her to the Trevi fountain, where more than thirty years ago she had tossed the obligatory three coins in the fountain. One coin would grant the wish to return to Rome one day. Well that had happened many times. The second coin was supposed to bring true love. It had taken a while, but at last it had come true. And the third, wasn't that to secure marriage to one's true love? Miranda hugged the thought to herself. She had spent all her coins, and there was now no need to wish again. But maybe Andy could come with a few cents and do the same? She might find it amusing, and Miranda's secretly superstitious heart hoped Andrea would bind her in even more securely as the true love to whom marriage would be inevitable.

She prepared to leave and make her way to the Colosseum booking offices. Then out of the blue, she heard her name stated, very quietly but firmly from within the crowd behind her. She turned, searching all the strangers' faces from behind her sunglasses but saw no-one she recognised.

"Miranda Priestly. There you are."

A woman approached her, a singular soul dressed in a green dress underneath a long black cardigan. She had a large leather bag slung over one shoulder and had short black hair. She smiled confidently, as if they had met several times. Miranda was completely flummoxed, but assumed it was a Runway fan. The woman's accent was Southern Irish, maybe more Cork than Dublin.

"I'm sorry. Have we met?" Miranda felt defensive and her voice came across as cold and very formal. She really didn't care to be accosted in a foreign capital by goodness knows who.

"Maggie McIntyre! Hello!" The stranger held out her hand in cheerful greeting, and Miranda had a reflex action of lightly shaking it. Then she was astonished to find her hand warmly grasped and pumped up and down. Oh dear, this was definitely going to be an overenthusiastic Runway reader. Although she didn't appear to be someone remotely interested in fashion.

"You may not know about me, I'm afraid, but I have been following you for a while. What a lovely surprise to find you in Rome."

"Is it?"

"Yes, such a wonderful city, and a wonderful time of year to be here! I do hope you and Andrea enjoy it to the full!"

"How do you know about Andrea? Who are you? Are you stalking me?"

The woman released her hand, and pushed it slightly as if to reassure.

"Oh no, far from it. Please don't be scared. We may just be following the same itinerary that's all. I'm researching Monteverdi, for a book I'm writing on early music. If our paths cross again I will give you a nod, and maybe you can introduce me to your beautiful fiancée."

Miranda felt a little light headed, and decided she had to sit down. The Maggie McIntyre character had seemed to be about to leave but now glanced at her with concern.

"But I still don't understand. How do you know me?"

"Let me explain."

She moved with Miranda to a curly cast-iron bench a short way back from the Trevi fountain.

"I know you through Gloria, - Gloria Levine?"

"Ah, now it makes more sense. You should have said."

"Yes maybe I should. Sometimes I forget to state the obvious. I am sorry. Let's just say I have followed your career, and I admire your writing.""

Miranda still felt a little shaky. Did her scribbled editorials count as writing?

"But what a coincidence, that you recognised me, in Rome of all places, that we're here at the same time."

"Hmm. I wouldn't worry about it. But anyway, I am sure we'll meet again soon. I must dash now though. Goodbye!"

And she was gone. Miranda blinked and the Irish early music scholar had vanished. So she wasn't stalking her. At least that was a relief. She'd showed no curiosity about where they were staying, or where they were going next. The encounter had taken no more than one minute, but it upset her in its enigmatic nature.

Perhaps, no, probably, it was the atmosphere around the Trevi fountain to blame, all those thousands of wishes, maybe they encouraged brief encounters of the inexplicable kind. Miranda shook herself down, grabbed her soft leather shoulder bag and decided to walk briskly on. She would ask Gloria if she did know the woman, later on. But for now, she wanted to plan Andrea's ideal day in Rome.

When she eventually returned to their room, Andy was just emerging from a delicious dream, one in which she was in Rome with her most favorite woman in the entire world, and as Miranda approached the bed, with that wicked half-smile on her face and a raised eyebrow, the dream became a reality. Andy turned and patted the bed beside her, and Miranda thankfully accepted her offer, lay down and kicked off her shoes. She leaned back against the pillows and breathed in the scent of Andrea's Givenchy perfume.

"This is new. It suits you though. Remind me what it is."

"Can't remember the name. treated myself to a bottle on the plane. You know, special offer. I was so bored with you fast asleep all the time, I had to do something."

"Those plane promotions are usually dreadful, but I like this." Miranda pulled out the bottle from Andrea's purse and smelled it

Andy, completely rested now after a three hour siesta, began to undo the buttons all up the front of Miranda's silk shirt. She chatted all the while she was disrobing her lover, pausing now and then to drop an adoring kiss on the rapidly heating flesh as she revealed more and more of its beauty.

"So tell me. Where did you go, what did you see?"

Miranda said little. Her mouth was being otherwise occupied with nibbling around Andrea's ear, and making her squirm and wriggle. Then she said, "Oh, something very strange did happen by the Trevi fountain. I met someone who claimed to know me, through Gloria. I'm not sure I believe her though. I think she was just a fan."

"If so, how would she know about Gloria?"

"Yes, you're right. Anyway, never mind. Are you going to shower before or after we make love?"

"Before, I wouldn't inflict my 24hours of rumpled grubbiness from flying on your exquisite body. Just stay there. You might finish undressing though. I've done all the tiresome part for you."

Miranda stretched like a cat and said, "In that case, I'll join you in the shower myself. The streets of Rome aren't the cleanest."

"How long do we have until dinner?"

"Long enough."

"It's never long enough."

Miranda was going to say something flippant and mildly catty, but changed her mind. Andy was right. It was never long enough. All their lives would never be long enough. She rose from the bed, held out her hand and led her rumpled, rosy and adorable young lover into the bathroom. The glory that was Rome could wait another day.


	7. A Wrinkle in Time

Miranda's Enchanted April Chapter 7.

"So many little cats!"

"We are walking through the ancient forum of Rome, the cradle of European culture, and the only thing which captures your attention are the feral cats?"

"Well, there are quite a few, you must agree. I have taken some photos to show Pumpkin when we get back home. And flowers! I never expected to see so many flowers all around the stones."

Andy had linked her arm into Miranda's as they strolled, and then clambered through the Forum. Her guide book had told her all about the long, long history of their location, and she loved the intensity of the old stone, but the actual fragility and temporary nature of all the valerian and other spring blooming flowers, coupled with the darting kittens made her feel almost disconnected with the history. She felt she was passing through a wrinkle in time, within an old, old civilisation.

Miranda who always looked a million dollars even when she carrying out the trash, turned heads now as they passed through the happy crowds. It was late morning and they had been progressing on foot from the Colosseum, soaking in all the classical magnificence of the exposed archaeology.

Andrea knew the time line, but she still found it hard to get her head round the fact that where they walked, people had conducted business, laughed, courted, fought even, since the 8th century BC., nearly three thousand years. The Colosseum, with its towering levels and dark underground corridors had frightened her, with the long silent echoes of all the agony of tortured people and animals permeating her mind. Its old stones held such sad and savage memories.

Miranda looked sideways at her beloved girl, and forgave her the focus on kittens, which had merely been a deflection from her sensitive reaction to the Colosseum. Andy was almost psychic in her reactions. She knew for example, usually without telling, just what Miranda was feeling and what she needed. Miranda knew by comparison, she herself had the insensitivity of an alley cat to the needs of others, but Andrea had taught her, and she now, more often than before, thought before speaking her mind. Or, more accurately, she didn't find it quite so much fun to make witty and often very caustic remarks at other people's expense.

"Come on, let's go over the hill to the Circus Maximus, where they had all the chariot races. Then we can walk along the River Tiber. I want to take you to Alfredo's for lunch."

"Oh yum, home of the famous fettucine!"

"I thought that might catch your attention! It is dreadfully fattening, loaded with cream, but undeniably delicious."

"We don't care, do we, about the fattening? All this walking will surely make up for it. I'm glad I persuaded you to wear flat shoes though, especially with all this bouldering."

Miranda chuckled and allowed Andrea to give her a hand up the hill. Rome was an excellent city for walking, but they would be covering a few miles by the end of the day if they stayed on foot. Getting a grasp of the oldest tourist sights was a necessary foundation for the days ahead absorbed in art history. She really wanted to show Andy the Cavallini mosaics, the Bernini statues and the magnificence of the Renaissance art of the Vatican.

She hadn't been able to sign up for a formal Art History class during these sabbatical months as she'd hoped to. Andy's head injury had dominated their lives in September, but she had read extensively at home, and she knew what was on her list of essential 'to-sees', statues, architectural glories and pictures in Rome. They walked on together, and arrived at Alfredo's where even before they had left New York, she had cunningly booked a table. This was a wise move, as the place was heaving.

Miranda was quietly pleased that her Italian sounded authentic, and she understood every word of the quick Roman patois around them as a flurry of waiters escorted them to a table. They assumed she was fluent and didn't translate the menu specials slowly into English.

Andrea sat down gratefully and just let Miranda get on with ordering for them both. She started a silent dialogue of teasing with a little baby boy at the next table, who kept hiding behind his napkin and then playing peekaboo with her. The Italians obviously loved children, and kept them with them when they went out to eat. The waiters too, seemed to adore little ones.

Miranda having made their order, and also dealt productively with the wine-waiter, noticed and informed her, "I brought the twins here once, when they were babies. I couldn't bear to leave them back in New York while we were at the Rome fashion week, so they came along too, with Cara, and another Nanny I had at the time. There was quite a large party of us from Runway altogether. The girls must have been about a year old. Anyway the head waiter suddenly scooped up Caroline and Cassie and carried them both off to the kitchen where they were passed round all the chefs. They were astonished by their red curls and bright blue eyes."

"You had them returned to you eventually, obviously?"

"Not without a struggle though! And then after we'd all left, I found that Caro had stolen a tea-spoon. She had it firmly in her right hand. I took it back to New York in the end. I think we still have it. By rights I should have returned it this time."

Andy imagined what it must have been like for Miranda, in those early days of being a working single parent. She had achieved the impossible, but maybe at the expense of never being able to fully unwind and relax. Now she looked fully alive, fully relaxed.

When the food came, and they both plunged their forks into the steamy, creamy gorgeousness of the original Fettucine recipe, she looked into Miranda's eyes and made her laugh. She licked her lips, and saw the inevitable quickening of Miranda's pulse. It always reassured her, that she could effortlessly bring that look of hot desire to the beautiful features opposite.

"Eat up, girl," murmured Miranda. "We have a busy afternoon out there ahead of us."

"Where are we off to next?"

"Back over the river to Trastevere. I am taking you to two wonderful churches, and forward from classical Rome to the Byzantine period in the 12th century, and then a little jump into the Baroque."

Andrea smiled. Miranda was obviously on a roll here as a tour guide and she allowed herself to be directed forwards in time and space as they walked off their lunch by crossing the Ponte Sisto into the medieval district of Trastevere. The narrow streets and alleyways were as atmospheric as a cunningly designed film-set, and Andrea pinched herself to remember that this was real, not a New World mock-up.

The only thing to distract were the numerous walking parties of Chinese and Korean tourists, running to catch up their umbrella toting guides. Miranda marched swiftly through the crowds and brought her to the Piazza of Santa Maria, a beautiful square where they paused for breath before entering the Church of the same name. Agnostic Miranda seemed to be having almost a religious apotheosis as she urged her forwards to marvel at the intricacy of the mosaics within, all based on the life of St Mary.

"This church was founded around 350 AD, but the church was rebuilt, and these mosaics date back to the end of the 13th century." They moved forwards to the picture of the Annunciation.

"What do you see?" Miranda interrogated her and made Andy concentrate. "Tell me about this mosaic."

Andrea gazed at the impassively stoical face of the Virgin Mary being visited by a multi-coloured winged angel.

"She is sitting in a stone house, which looks far from modest, on a throne, with a floral background to her chair, and a large red cushion. She is dressed as a very respectable young woman, well not so young really, and has red socks or shoes on. She also looks quite pregnant already! There is a funny little insert in the corner of the picture, God's face as a man with a beard and long hair, sending down the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove to impregnate her. She has a pot of flowers on one hand, and a bowl of fruit, maybe olives or limes beside her. In her hand she carries a book. This isn't a peasant girl. She is obviously literate. I wonder who the model was."

"Hmm. Well done. I am marvelling at the practical skills in the mosaic making. But you're right to think about the people behind the picture. Look over here, the same man, Pietro Cavallini, created this nativity scene." They moved round the Church.

"Hey, this is an all-female scene. It's a wonderful change from the stable idea. Mary is on a very comfortable bed, with no less than four other women helping her. They look like servants. Two of them are preparing a bath for the infant Jesus, and two of them are serving Mary with food and wine! No men in sight, but a definitely upper class interior!"

"Isn't it a fascinating snapshot of life in 1295 in Rome? And we are led to believe that everyone wallowed around in mud huts in those days. It comforts my materialistic heart to know that seven hundred years ago people appreciated nice things, beautiful fabrics, and elegant glassware. Look at the table cloth on the side table, and the cutlery!"

Andrea had to laugh. Miranda obviously was delighted not to see any donkeys or oxen crowding in.

"Oh darling, you're so right. But what do you think the people who crowded into this Church for Sunday Mass thought? Who was the patron who commissioned it? I bet the poor people who came to worship firmly got the idea, "Not for the likes of us!"

"Well, very possibly. But we have to keep moving. There is so much to see. There is another church in this quarter I want to visit as well, in honour of Saint Cecilia, and there is a statue there which looks wonderful in the art books. I just need to see it in person!"

Andrea followed Miranda's lead, and realised she'd just been given a little tutorial on observation. Miranda was a natural teacher. She decided to stop dreaming her way through these atmospheric Roman streets, and sharpen her wits. They looked at every mosaic in la Basilica di Santa Maria round the church and then blinked their way back out into the strong sunshine. The wind had dropped and the temperature was now an easy 70 degrees. Miranda was striding ahead now and Andrea skipped to catch her up as they walked the few hundred yards over to the Piazza di Santa Cecilia.

This Church was very different, but still had more wonderful Cavallini mosaics. Miranda though wanted to focus on the Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, an achingly beautiful marble likeness of the dead girl, fallen asleep, intact, incorruptible and lissom. It had been carved by a very young sculptor called Maderno around 1600. It was so naturalistic, the girl might have been able to wake and rise and stretch and smile. It was a masterpiece.

They stood in front of it for a long time, in silence.

"It is so sad."

"It certainly makes you think about the waste of martyrdom, and of sexual violence."

"Thank you for bringing me, darling."

"Thank you for coming, my love. Artwork like this must be shared."

"Shall we walk back to the hotel now? I think I need a long cuddle and a quiet hour or two to absorb everything we've seen so far."

"Of course. You can give me a back massage if you will. But there is also reading to be done before we take our art course further into the main Renaissance period. We have all the masculinity and muscles of Michelangelo to cope with tomorrow!"

"A feminist tour of Rome?"

"Well, from a woman's perspective shall we say? The older I get, the more I trust my own eyes and interpretation."

"And while we're talking about reading, will you critique the last chapters of my novel? I need you to give me an honest opinion. One reason I have been a little dreamy is that it is still wrapped round my brain like ivy. I know it's not quite there yet, but I have finished the storyline."

"Yes, naturally I will. But you are a better writer than I am. You are truly creative."

"But you are the editor. You will always be able to shape our story better than I can."

"So it is our story, your novel?"

"In a way it is. There are definite similarities. But we are also living in our story, right now, so my fictionalised account cannot be really accurate. I also worry that because I am so happy, my novel is too happy, that it provides too easy a solution. Maybe it needs some more misery."

Miranda decided Andrea was plunging into rather deep water, and decided to lighten the mood.

"I think I am with someone in urgent need of a gelato. Come on, sweetie, let's patronise one of those delightful little ice-cream shops we passed coming over here."

And they left the Basilica, where the statue of the young Saint Cecilia slept her eternal sleep. The woman who had introduced herself as Maggie McIntyre, who was ostensibly reading her book in a café on the opposite side of the Piazza, observed them go, and scribbled a note in her note-pad, before slipping away herself. Then a flock of doves flew up into the sunlight, like the Holy Spirit retreating back to heaven, and the shadows of the tall buildings around began to lengthen. The scene changed and another medley of tour groups covered all their tracks.


	8. Culture Vultures

Andy woke, stretched her arms high up above her head and then tugged at the fine cotton sheet which had somehow wrapped her up like a mummy overnight. She was still trapped inside its coils but it smelt wonderful, of lavender and violets and goodness knows what other flower scents. Equally trapped beside her lay the curved body of the woman she loved, still motionless in sleep. Andy teasingly drew a line down her bare shoulder with a finger-tip and dropped a kiss on the silver mop of hair.

Miranda stirred, which was the desired result, but then did one of her characteristic snuggles, and buried her face even deeper in the pillow. Her arm went out and captured Andy's hand and held it fast. Outside their long casement windows the sounds of Rome waking up to a bright spring morning could be heard, and sunlight peeped in through a gap in the drapes.

"Are you going to get up with me and hit the day, or are we just going to wallow here for the morning?"

"Wallow? I am not a hippopotamus," murmured Miranda, her eyes still firmly closed. "Just give me five, or ten. You made me work so hard last night. Have some pity, please."

Andrea laughed. Her earlier tiredness and jet-lag had now completely disappeared. She had enjoyed their day before, exploring classical and medieval Rome, but she was now eager to be up and out, and put in a full day on the Renaissance and Baroque wonders of the city.

She released herself, abandoning attempts to pull Miranda with her, managed to unwind herself from their bedclothes, and walked naked to the bathroom to take a shower. Her watch on the side of the washbasin said 7.30, so maybe she was being mean to wake Miranda. It had been past 1am before they had stopped making love, and it was true, Miranda had led the way, and done most of the gymnastics.

Andrea had learned almost from the start of their relationship, that Miranda enjoyed sex so much, she felt short-changed if they weren't at it at least once in any twenty-four hour period. Even when either of them were "unavailable", and that happened increasingly at the same time, she loved to have erotic massages and kissing festivals. She was a different woman under cover of darkness. There was no sarcasm, no caustic joking, and no pretence. But there were always games, and passion and an almost feral animism, coupled with tremendous fun.

Andy enjoyed sex, and was naturally physical in showing affection, but Miranda, Miranda was something else. Andy tried to analyse it, that magic power she had within her to transform the experience of making love into a conjuring trick. There was no-one like her, no-one in the world, and it was all for Andy. She shivered just thinking about it, and turned on the shower so it beat down on her shoulders and soaked the short waves of chestnut hair which now fringed her collar bones.

When she emerged from the shower, clean, pink and warm, wrapped up in a large towel, like a Roman lady at the bath-house, Miranda was already sitting at the writing desk, wearing her latest silk robe with the fancy flowers, and reading a trio of art books about Rome. She had her glasses on the end of her nose, and no-one would have imagined how she had growled and howled like a banshee in the small hours. Andy went across and looked over her shoulder, to look at her reading matter.

"Wow, you came round quickly? Are you plotting our itinerary for the day?"

"Hmm. Yes. Wallowing indeed. I ask you!"

"Ha, I thought that might provoke a response. But isn't it a lovely word? I would like nothing better than to wallow with you in a nice little swamp for the rest of my life."

"Be quiet and make us both a coffee. I'm busy here."

Andrea turned away to their state of the art coffee machine, provided in the room. It produced hot, dark, intense little cups of expresso, not like the diluted half pints at home, rightly called Americanos, but Miranda liked it. Strong coffee was still her preferred legal stimulant, and she loved the chugging noise it made as the steam pushed the coffee into the cup.

"Yes Ma'am. Coming right up."

Andy did think about dropping her towel and enticing Miranda from her studies, back to their rumpled bed, but decided to be sensible. They did have a long day ahead of them. She opened the curtains and let the day in.

"Coffee!"

"I'm on it. Give me a chance."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Tell me about the Vatican art work."

The couple were walking across the vast square towards St Peter's. Miranda's headscarf and dark glasses made her resemble a Hollywood actress on vacation, and she had pushed Andrea into a very demure outfit of a dress and jacket with elbow length sleeves. Her own summer-weight navy suit looked stunning, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to forego the high heels which set it off, although a tiny voice of common sense had chided her from inside her head for such foolishness. "Your toes will be very sorry for this by the evening," it said.

She was very pleased she had booked their tickets in advance as the queue to enter the Basilica through the main entrance was enormous. A conversation with an Italian tour guide two days before now gave her secret information, and she shepherded Andrea in through a quiet side gate.

"Well," she said, in answer to Andy's request. "The Vatican City art work. Where to start? I think the first thing to say is it proves the importance of math, and physical fitness. There are supposed to be seven miles of galleries altogether."

"Huh? And mathematics?"

"You'll see. Everywhere we'll look will be a masterclass in perspective. Look at this square, at the perfect colonnades and the exact geometry of it. This was designed by Bernini in the 17th century. It's supposed to illustrate the open arms of the Catholic Church, but to me it more signifies the all- encompassing power it tried to exert over people's lives.

"But in every fresco, every painting, you'll see how the Renaissance painters and sculptors used mathematic principles, that, and the learning they had taken from studying classical, architecture and the re-emergence of the old knowledge and philosophies.

"The second theme I want to explore with you, is the gayness or straightness of everything"

"Miranda, you sure do say surprising things at times."

"Well, maybe. But the pieces I want us to look at especially are all about the differences between Michelangelo, gay, very butch, tortured and always falling out with his patrons, and Raphael, probably straight, but very effeminate, gentle, well mannered, and esteemed by everyone. They both portrayed the human condition in ways unsurpassed by anyone else in their generation, both geniuses.

"Oh and something else which will amuse you, they both couldn't resist appearing in their own pictures. Michelangelo is the corner of the Crucifixion of St Peter, and Raphael definitely put a self-portrait of himself in the School of Athens massive picture. There was only eight years between them. Michelangelo hated Raphael and was jealous of him. It's a very modern story in many ways.

"Not so different from Beethoven and Mozart, music wise I mean." Andrea felt on stronger ground talking about music than she did about art, but Miranda's ability to absorb facts fascinated her. Never having had the chance to go to college, she had such a thirst and a passion for learning and discovery, and her love of colours were naturally drawing her into the technical genius behind the art.

They spent most of the whole day in the Vatican galleries, in the vastness of St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel. When they stood before the magnificent picture, Raphael's School of Athens, with its small groups of philosophers animatedly discussing the meaning of life, Andrea looked for the artist's self-portrait and easily found it. He looked so young, and was only in his late twenties when he painted it.

She gazed up at the vast painting. "It makes me feel I have achieved absolutely nothing in my life. And we are so arrogant in the States. We think we are the best country at everything, but we are so flimsy compared to this. Yes, we can replicate it, but everything in our country is new, still adolescent in comparison. "

Miranda put an arm round her, and gave her a hug.

"Don't despair. You have a few years ahead of you yet to polish your art as a writer. And in the States, well we, all came from somewhere else, apart from the First Nation, our DNA carries the same heritage as folk round here, and we can produce amazing things as well. But look, what interests me here is the dialogue between Aristotle and Plato. See, how Plato has his hand raised, and Aristotle's points down?"

"Yes."

"Well, Plato taught that everything in the physical world may be a shadow of reality. That we are really living in a cave. We are surrounded by mystery. St Paul said the same thing when he said, "Now we see as in a glass darkly."

"Trust my agnostic love to be able to quote scripture! What did Aristotle think then?"

"He trusted his senses and the faculty of reason. He believed in observation, in what you can tangibly touch and experience."

"But what about love? Could either of them explain love?"

"No darling, I don't think they could, not as well as you and I, anyway. They were men after all!"

"Michelangelo knew about love. Look at the Pieta. Where there is love there is always pain."

"Oh darling, don't say that. I can't bear the thought of ever causing you pain."

"Miranda, one day, of course, one of us will have to feel heart-aching pain, because one of us will go before the other. But until that day, I am going to make damn sure we have one hell of a good time."

"You do realise the love we have, carnal love between women, is banned by the set-up here. We would have been burned at the stake in an earlier century, even when these beautiful works of art were being created."

"I know, and I don't like it. I think we've stayed inside long enough. Let's get out and go for a late lunch somewhere sunny. My physical body is telling me it's hungry."

"And my Platonic search for perfection wants to see your beautiful curves maintained, so let's go!"

As they finished a delicious meal in the warmth of an attractive café forecourt a few hundred yards away from the over-priced eateries round St Peter's, Andrea wiped tomato sauce off her chin with her napkin and pulled out a flyer from her bag.

"Here, look at this. Someone gave it to me while you were in the rest-room. Would you like to go?"

She handed over the small sheet of paper. Miranda pulled out her specs and read the small print. It was information about a Monteverdi concert that evening, The Vespers, being performed in honour of it being the Easter season, by a local Roman choir and orchestra. It was in one of main city churches at 8pm.

"Monteverdi's masterpiece, in sixteen parts I believe. I've never heard the whole work, yes, I'd love to go, if you would."

"I would. She seemed very insistent that we would enjoy it."

"Who?"

"The woman who passed me the slip. She said it was a choir worth listening to."

Miranda felt a strange spell like shiver down her spine. She felt she knew the answer to the question she was about to ask.

"What did she look like, this woman?"

"Oh, you know, pleasant. About your age, maybe a bit older, grey hair, academic looking. She sounded Irish."

"I think I may have met her. She might have been the person who knows Gloria. She is keen on Monteverdi."

"Oh well, maybe we'll see her there, and you can explore what the connection is exactly. You could also always email Gloria about it and ask her, if you're concerned."

"Oh pooh, it's probably something and nothing. No need to worry Gloria. I'll ask her when she comes to our wedding, if I remember."

"Good, now I don't know about you, but I am going to defy Nigel's ideas about maintaining my perfect size for the wedding dress, and opt for one of those wonderful ice-creams. Joining me?"

"Just ask for an extra spoon. Those are at least 2000 calories. I may have to help you out."

Andrea pulled a little face, remembering Miranda's thieving tendencies when it came to ice-creams and ordered two. It was a good hour later when they finally tottered home to their hotel, and yes, Miranda's toes did complain forcibly all the way. It was a good job they had an hour to unwind and amuse themselves in bed, before the evening concert which lay ahead.


	9. All the world's a stage

(Author's Note.

Some of you are wondering about the new character who seems to be following our pair of ladies around. I think she means no harm, but you never know! I have left a little clue or two, as well as one or two red herrings as to her identity in each chapter since they arrived in Rome, and will continue to do so. Just for your amusement. Let me know what you think. Maybe Miranda and Andy will solve the puzzle first.)

It was a lovely day in the hills north of Rome. Miranda and Andrea had picked up their hire car from their hotel an hour earlier, with the arrangement to drop it off at the end of their road-trip in a week's time, up in Venice. It was a cheeky little red Alpha Romeo sports number, with the electric hood stowed back behind them. The open-top meant that they both needed scarves to keep their hair out of their eyes, but it made for an exhilarating ride. Miranda was driving, and enjoying herself very much.

Their time in Rome had ended on a definite artistic high with a visit to the Galleria Borghese to see the High Baroque sculptures. The Bernini Rape of Proserpina by Pluto, and Apollo and Daphne, with the transformation of Daphne into a laurel tree, had stunned them both. Bernini had somehow made the marble look like flesh and blood, wood and leaves, and the delicacy of the compositions, both in a twirl of movement and tension in the struggle between the figures had seemed almost super-human.

Andrea had been outraged though by the subject matter. The violence in both cases still troubled her.

"It was mythological, darling. Like they say, no-one was hurt in the making of the movie." Miranda had tried to soften Andy's fury, which had lasted right through their delightful lunch in the restaurant terrace afterwards.

"But the myths are conjured up by humans, very much portraying human reality. Proserpina was actually crying, while that vile Pluto was abducting her, forcing himself on her. And Daphne's father turned her into a frigging tree to get rid of Apollo. Those beautiful girls, just sacrificed to male lust."

"Well, I can see the power of the narrative through the art really got through to you. But they were fictional characters."

"Prototypes, I know. But very unsettling. Why is it that male artists so often like to portray women suffering at men's hands, like poor St Cecilia the other day? Does it turn them on? It's something I am really struggling to deal with."

This conversation had happened over lunch the day before, but as they drove away from Rome, Andy was still chuntering on about it, and Miranda could see she was still processing all the sexual violence they had observed. As they both faced forward, shielded even from each other by two pairs of dark glasses, she asked, "Were you ever sexually assaulted. Andy darling?"

Andy took the question in her stride and replied promptly.

"Well, yes actually. At college, too many guys thought a casual invitation to go out for a pizza with them meant a green light to get in my pants. But playing soft-ball gave me sufficient muscles to bop them one, and I have fast legs for running. No lasting damage, but it could have been very different. And what about you?"

Miranda had then surprised Andy by going rather quiet. She didn't reply for some minutes, and then said, "Felt up at twelve, had my knickers torn off once at thirteen, and raped and had an abortion at fourteen."

"Oh my God! Miranda!"

"Yeah, not good. That's the part of my teenage years' saga I didn't inflict on you when I told you my life-story. I was taken to the hospital and supported through it all by the social worker your Mom reminded me of. But you know, I'm a tough cookie. I came through, and still passed all my school exams with distinction. But it was a big driver in making me run away to join the circus. I was sixteen going on twenty-five by then. No wonder I liked gay boys after that! "

"Poor Miri. Tell me more, the whole story if and whenever you want to."

"I will. Some day. Now, I suggest we take some back roads through these delightful hills, and find a classic little Italian town at the top of one of them for lunch. It's too lovely a day, and I have too lovely a companion to spoil by sorrow and regret. Can you find a route on the car's satnav or through your IPhone?"

"Of course."

They took a route away from the main motorways and climbed up into the Apennine hills. Andrea had loved Rome, but enjoyed the Italian countryside even more. Even though it was April, the smells of early summer were invading her senses.

"It's a shame."

"What is?"

"All those little hand-painted notices telling us we can't go down the lanes we keep passing. Not very friendly."

Miranda's looked puzzled. "What are you blathering on about, darling idiot?"

"Fragole!" everywhere in red paint. It looks like Danger, or Keep out!"

Miranda roared with laughter. "Now you should see why learning languages can be both informative and beneficial. 'Fragole' doesn't mean Keep out, it's the Italian word for Strawberries! All these little farms have strawberries for sale, that's all."

Andrea laughed, and demanded, "Well, why aren't we stopping then? Maybe some of them will have cream as well!"

"It's nearly noon, sweetie. Be patient, and we'll take lunch shortly, when I am sure there will be 'Fragole' on the menu for dessert."

"Spoleto looks a sizeable place. Let's eat there. It means going back down on to a main road, but it says it has wonderful things to see."

"You're the navigator. Just tell me where to go. As long as we reach Perugia by 4pm."

As they ate, in a renowned restaurant in the ancient Umbrian town of Spoleto, Andy thought back over the overload of sensory experiences they had had in Rome, not just in art, but in music as well. The performance of Monteverdi's Vespers had blown her away.

"In Italy there is just too much to see and do. I could spend six months here with no problem."

"I agree, but the twins are already pining for us. Maybe I should have brought them along after all." Miranda had been calling the twins every evening, and missed them very much, even though they seemed to be having a whale of a time in Ohio.

"I think all the culture we've enjoyed would have been too much, even for them. The Monteverdi, for example, even though they are musical children, might have been too long and too complex."

"Possibly, but I am so pleased we were at least able to hear it in a live performance. We never met the woman who passed you the billfold about it though. I rather expected to see her there. She did tell me she was researching Monteverdi after all."

"Yes, but I was grateful for the prompt anyway."

Italian lunches are usually long and leisurely and Miranda and Andy were slipping into the relaxed mode. It suited Miranda's digestion better to eat the main meal in the middle of the day and have only a light supper. With the wealth of food on offer, it took them several courses to reach the strawberries.

But when they came, they were sweet, and full of flavour, so different from the bland ones sold in New York all through the year. Andrea tucked into a large bowl with great enthusiasm. Then as she popped the last one down her throat, she said, "Now tell me, what has Sophia told you about her mother's situation? Is the old lady expecting us?"

"Yes, I believe so. The staff at the nursing home are, anyway. They told me on the phone that she is now confined to bed. I was thinking if you have your IPhone, and we call up Sophia while we are there, then maybe she can link up with her mother and talk to her, maybe even do a video link. That would be good, if we can make the connection."

"What time will it be in New York? I need to check. Are they six hours behind us?"

"Currently. Now let's go. After Perugia, we will still have some driving to do to reach Florence."

They drifted away from the restaurant, and visited the very well preserved Roman amphitheatre in Spoleto before they left.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances . . ." Andy forgot the rest of the quote from 'As You Like It', but as she looked round the ancient terraces, the same feeling came over her which she had had in the Roman forum, that time was wrinkling, standing still and she and Miranda were caught in another dimension for a few moments.

As they drove on towards Perugia she asked Miranda, "Did you ever see an episode of the Simpsons where Homer falls through a hole and gets caught in the real world in three dimensions. It was so thought-provoking. He realises he is a two dimensional character for the first time, and doesn't have the same number of fingers as the people around him."

Miranda, who had handed over the wheel to Andrea, gave a little snort. "I never watch the Simpsons."

"You should. It deals with all of life's conundrums."

"Not the world of fashion though."

"No. Perhaps I'll write to them and ask them to put your character in it. You could give Marge a makeover."

"Well, she certainly needs it."

"So, you do follow it?"

"No, certainly not. Keep your eyes on the road, girlie. But I agree with you if you're saying the edges between fact and fiction seem to be blurring here. I feel slightly disconnected from my real self, right now. Only you seem really real to me. As if we are in a novel somehow."

"If it's a novel, it's a very romantic one. Our romance has been even sweeter than the fictionalised version I have put in my book."

"Oh yes, I need to talk to you about your book. Does the older woman have to be quite such a bitch? Readers may be led to think I treated you like that!"

Andrea glimpsed Miranda sideways and chuckled. Every one of the words put into the mouth of her older protagonist had come straight from Miranda's comments prior to their falling in love, but she guessed Miranda had conveniently forgotten her own tendencies to whisper poisonous put-downs on a regular basis.

When they reached Perugia and climbed in the car up to the old part of the city with its spectacular views, Miranda went off to ask precise directions to the nursing-home. It was run by an order of catholic sisters, and Andy was taken aback to see the old conservative full-length habits and wimples still worn by the nuns, very rarely seen these days in America. They were invited into the office of a senior nun who appeared to be in charge of the home.

Miranda conducted the conversation in Italian, but Andy picked up the gist of the dialogue. It seemed Sophia's mother had been taken seriously ill with pneumonia a few days before and was now in the hospital wing. They were escorted through the echoing corridors and cloisters over to this location and led to a side ward where a small white-haired woman lay connected to breathing apparatus. She had Sophia's strong features, but had a pallor about her which Miranda didn't like the look of at all.

As they came by the bed, she gazed up into Miranda's face, as if searching for meaning of this strange visit.

"Heavily medicated, to help the pain," said the Matron in Italian, and Miranda nodded. "Are there family to visit, who live locally?" she replied. "No, no-one, they all emigrated to Australia, except a daughter, maybe the one you know, who is in USA. She has no visitors these days, not since her sister died."

Miranda felt dreadful somehow. For her own grandmother she had felt nothing but hatred, but this old soul, what could she do to help her in her last days? She took the woman's hand and squeezed it, and explained she was visiting from New York, that Sophia had sent her.

At the name, the woman's eyes lit up, and she whispered, "My little Sophia, my youngest. Is she coming? It has been so long. Is she coming now at last?"

Miranda turned to the Matron. "I think I should inform her daughter, arrange a flight for her as soon as possible. I think she would not want her mother to die without seeing her one last time."

The nun nodded. "That would be wonderful, if you could arrange it. In fact it might postpone her passing, if she has something to look forward to. But it needs to be very soon."

"I know."

Miranda thought the shock of seeing her daughter through the small screen of a smart-phone would be too much for the poor old soul, so just made quiet soothing conversation with her. They stayed for fifteen minutes or more, until she fell asleep. Miranda stood up, releasing the old woman's fingers. Then in English, she said to Andrea. "Come dear. Let's call Sophia, now. I would like to see her on a flight tonight. She needs to be here."

To instruct Sophia, who had not returned to Italy in twenty years, that she needed to get to her mother's bedside in the next twenty-four hours at the latest, needed Miranda to be her most directive. But she pulled it off.

All Sophia's emotional and financial barriers to making the trip melted away under the crisp encouragement of her dear friend, who claimed the expense was nothing. She would wire her the money immediately, for a business class seat on the first available flight. Andrea took care of the administration, while trying to reassure Sophia that her mother would still be here when she arrived, and that she was not in severe pain, that the nuns were caring for her very well.

Miranda and Andy eventually drove on to Florence, both slightly exhausted at witnessing the immediacy of the problem, and having to take some swift actions to help it. Sophia was now set to arrive by 6pm the following evening, with a car to meet her at Rome and drive her the hundred or so miles up to Perugia. She would call them, of course, as soon as she had seen her mother, and they could then arrange to meet the following day.

"It was a lovely thing to do," said Andrea quietly as they approached the bridge over the River Arno just before Florence, making their way to another luxurious hotel. "Sophia would have been wracked with guilt if she never made it in time to see her Mom."

"When you have the means and the ability to do good for someone else. You should always do it," said Miranda quietly. "It is good karma as well."

"Do you believe in that, in Karma? In what comes around, goes around?"

"Yes, I do. But I also believe that sometimes we get given a gift we certainly don't deserve. Like I've been given you."

"You do say the sweetest things."

Miranda got out of the car and gave a huge stretch. Her neck and back were stiff from the drive in the unfamiliar car. She said in her best EIC voice.

"Hmm. Well, what are you waiting for? Fetch the porter while I check us in. If you like me so much you can give me a deep muscle massage, once we are up in our room. We have another packed day tomorrow, and I think I need some care and attention."

Andrea opened the trunk, and began to unload. She loved being bossed, if she was honest.

"Yes Miranda. Dearest," she replied. She knew exactly what those deep muscle massages generally led into.


	10. The Birth of Venus

"Florence in the springtime! How wonderful to be here, and to be alive!"

Andrea flung open the drapes and opened the long windows, walking out onto the balcony. They were staying in the Palazzo Guadagni Hotel, south of the River Arno, but close to so many wonderful palaces and museums, and within walking distance of the Bardini gardens.

She knew Miranda had another walking tour planned for them, and today she was determined to insist they both wore pants and flat shoes. Pounding the streets of Rome, especially up to the Vatican had badly bruised Miranda's toes in those ridiculous heeled pumps she loved, and it had taken a long soak in the hot tub and a gentle application of foot cream to stop them throbbing.

Their chosen hotel wasn't as multi-starred as their Rome lodgings, but it had the advantage from Andy's point of view of being quite ridiculously old, part of a palace built in 1506, with fantastic views across the city from its high terrace. She and Miranda had spent a wonderful hour or two drinking cocktails after dinner there the evening before.

Then the Italian sky above their heads had been a dark midnight blue, sparkled with golden stars, but now it was more a delicate misty azure, with a slight mist which rose off the river, and curled its tendrils round the red-roofed cluster of ancient houses and numerous church towers and domes. She looked up at their bedroom's plasterwork ceiling with the sunlight bouncing off the frescoes in the room, and could not believe that five hundred years of people had stayed in this room before them.

Miranda was lying on top of the bed-covers surveying her battered toes, and wishing she had listened to Andy's advice several days before. But after a lifetime living in heels it was hard to change. In many ways her bruised and blistered feet resembled those of a ballet dancer and her calf tendons had almost permanently contracted from walking on what amounted to tiptoe. But at least her toes were straight and strong. Today she would be good and wear walking shorts, trainer socks and shoes. She had an expensive branded pair after all, designed for urban hiking, and anyway, no-one would recognise her here, surely.

Andrea walked past the bed on the way to have a shower, and bent and kissed Miranda's feet in a mock obeisance as she passed. "Let's go down in a little while and have breakfast with everyone else," she suggested. "The view from the terrace is so lovely. And while we eat, you can instruct me on what we're going to see here."

"Very well," agreed Miranda, mellow from sleep and an early morning cuddle with her darling girl. She was concerned about something though.

"I've been worrying about Sophia. Her plane should have taken off by now. I do hope she sleeps on the flight. Did I do the right thing in making her come, do you suppose? Perhaps I was too bossy."

"No, you did exactly the right thing. You acted like a fairy godmother in fact, and made it happen. Sometimes we all need one of them."

Andrea disappeared behind the bathroom door and there was a sound of a power shower. Miranda rose from the bed, pulled her robe round her and went over to look at the city view for herself. She had been to Rome, Milan and Venice before, but her work had never brought her to Firenze, so this was as new to her as it was to Andrea, but her head was full of all the reading she had done, and the paintings she wanted to see. They would hopefully not upset Andrea as much as the violent scenes in the Villa Borghese galleries.

Miranda wanted especially to gaze on the Birth of Venus, an outrageously gorgeous nude by Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery, dating from 1469. Gloria and Lee had had a life-size copy of it in their bedroom in California. It was one of the very first secular portrayal of a naked woman in modern Europe, probably painted for male titillation, but now an icon of lesbian joy.

The craziness of it, a weightless, luscious Venus, with streaming gold hair right down her naked back, skateboarding out of the ocean on a giant scallop shell, surrounded by flowers, really appealed to Miranda. If she was honest, it was to see this painting in particular that she had come on pilgrimage.

The Goddess of Love, blown to shore by the west wind, this was the sort of deity Miranda felt inclined to worship. Bringing Andrea before it to do homage could act as a sort of celebratory outing for their relationship. She would offer Andrea to the Goddess of Love. "See, this is my best beloved. Give us your blessing, please, Venus."

Their breakfast consisted of the fantastic Italian coffee, heaped piles of wonderful fruits, and an array of feather-light pastries. The American obsession with dismal eggbeater omelettes and dry toast would be laughed out of court here in Tuscany.

Miranda, who could count calories as automatically and as effortlessly as a card-sharp could count cards in a casino, appalled herself by simply not caring to do the math, and tore into the almond croissants like a hungry teenage boy. Andrea smiled as she watched her.

"So we have three days here altogether?"

"Yes, but we should go back to Perugia tomorrow, to meet Sophia, and I think we should also take advantage of having our car and visit Fiesole and San Gimigniano as well."

"But today is all on foot?"

"Definitely. We need to get into the Uffizi before it becomes unbearably crowded, and then go to the Galleria dell' Accademia to look at Michelangelo's David. We can then walk over the Ponte Vecchio where I want to buy you a necklace for your lovely neck, and then there is somewhere special I'd like us to visit, the place where Robert and Elizabeth Barratt Browning lived for fifteen years when they eloped and escaped from her over-bearing father. It's open to the public, and Gloria especially recommended it."

They grabbed their bags, maps and sunglasses and left shortly thereafter. Spring in Florence, as Andrea had exulted, was indeed the best time to visit. The Easter crowds were building, but the air was fresh and clean, and the slightly unsavoury smell of drains which might have spoilt the atmosphere in Florence in the heat of high summer had yet to emerge.

The sheer elegance and beauty of the old medieval town enthralled Andrea, and Miranda had to continually pull her away from various views and pretty corners she wanted to photograph from her IPhone. They managed to be in the queue for Uffizi tickets just before it opened, and slipped inside to face the wide marble staircases connecting the floors. Andrea was astonished at the size of the multi-level old palace, where the galleries ran in a bewilderingly complex U shape, but a guide designed probably for American culture vultures had given them a route round the starred pieces which it said were compulsory.

Miraculously, when they reached the Birth of Venus, the gallery was only half full, and they could stand in front of it in silent worship. Then Miranda began to point out the things she especially liked, all the gold from Venus's long tresses, echoed in the rays across the sky, and the wonderful fabrics and designed embroideries worked into the clothing which the attendant was handing out towards Venus, inviting her to cover her beauty up with an appropriate high-end garment. Fifteenth century Florence obviously produced some wonderful couture.

Miranda might be worshipping the needlework, but Andrea stared at Venus and chuckled. "She's no better than she should be, isn't she? She certainly hasn't just been new-born! And her hair is messier than mine used to be!"

"I think she is wonderful," breathed Miranda. "And isn't she beautiful?"

"I think you are more beautiful," whispered Andrea. "I wouldn't swop her for you. Would you?"

"What?"

"Swop me for a night with Venus there?"

"Of course not." Miranda teased, "But that hair really is something else. You know I have a thing for long hair."

"I know," Andrea sighed theatrically. "Mine has grown back to my collar at least. I am trying!"

"Darling idiot. You know I adored you when they shaved your head, and I would adore you however you looked. I'm only joking. Come on now, I want us to look at a very different painting, but again, one with wonderful fabrics."

And she led Andrea off to the sixteenth century gallery to visit Eleonara di Toledo staring out with her stolid little two year old son, the next heir to the Medici dynasty's fortune.

"See, after the joy of Venus, here we have a really miserable woman, blanking out all emotion, chained in by her elaborately expensive jewellery, and trapped inside that fantastic dress. She doesn't show any love or joy towards her son even."

"Who was she?"

"It says she was a member of the Spanish Royal family who came to Italy to marry the Medici heir. I expect she thought she had married beneath her, and it would have been an arranged match anyway. I do hope she was happier in real life than she looks."

"It's a very mannered portrait. I can see why you'd go gaga over the dress. Can you imagine creating that fabric by hand?"

"Yes, I always look at the clothing in early portraits, and imagine how hard the poor souls must have worked who created it. But maybe they enjoyed their work, and the silks and brocades, some of them by this time were coming from the east, even all the way from China."

"Really?"

"Yes, remember Marco Polo, and how Christopher Columbus went west, thinking he'd find a quicker route to the Far East. It was all about trade. The history of fabric is a fascinating story. If I ever write a book, it might be about that. Just think about it. Every stitch sewn by hand, every thread hand-spun."

"Hmm. Just being with you gives me so many ideas for writing myself. You really expand my mind, Miri. But shall we move on now, as there are so many wonderful things to see?"

And they wandered along through the kilometres of exquisite art-work. There was one highlighted in their guide which Andrea had a particular fancy for seeing, another famous picture by Botticelli, the Adoration of the Magi.

This one was packed full of men, and the three wise men were all portrayed as members of the Medici family, who ruled Florence at the time. The man who had commissioned the painting was also present, but in a less prominent position, so there was obviously a lot of sucking up to the rich and powerful going on here.

Andy read from the paper guide to identify other Florentine notables, and then commented, "Oh, and there is a self-portrait of the artist here too. Look, a rather bold young man, staring straight out of the canvas at us, apparently Botticelli. It was obviously the fashion in the fifteenth century. We saw Michelangelo, and Raphael doing the same thing in Rome."

"Marketing and promotion isn't a present-day invention, obviously," replied Miranda. "They knew they should get their features recognised. Like you will have to put your beautiful face on the back of your novel when it's published. Like I have to have my face plastered in the front of every edition of Runway. It increases brand recognition and sales."

"I think it's more than that, though. The artists wanted to be present in their creations, for fun partly, but also just to join in with the community of their viewers. Did you know, the author of the Inspector Morse novels asked if he could walk on as an extra in every one of the TV episodes?"

"No, I didn't know that. Interesting." Miranda looked at her slim white-gold wristwatch. Time was getting on.

"Well, are we done here for now? We need to go and visit David next. No-one comes to Florence without seeing that young man."

Andrea nodded happily in agreement, and they slipped back out into the bright sunshine.

The enormous statue of David, carved from a single block of marble, impressed them greatly, as it was intended to. Here Michelangelo had created the male equivalent of the Botticelli Venus, the archetypal fantasy of a young powerful male, arrogant in his beauty and sure of winning the fight against the poor, out-classed Goliath.

Afterwards, they sat at an outside table in one of the neighbouring cafes, and surveyed the passing scene over a shared gelato. Andy liked people watching, and couldn't help noticing what was happening at a bar just across the piazza. After fifteen minutes or so, she became really shocked and nudged Miranda.

"Hey, look over there. There are several young men who keep going through the door and emerging with old guys. Then they go round the back somewhere, and in just a few minutes return, but without the older men. Then they bring out another one. Are they doing what I think they're doing?"

Miranda adjusted her shades and looked. Then she paused, her ice-cream spoon half way to her lips.

"You're right. Oh dear. And so blatent as well. In the centre of town. It wouldn't take Miss Marple to figure that one out."

Andy spluttered. "Miss Marple? She surely wouldn't know what they were doing! You shock me by even mentioning her in this context."

"Oh Andy, Andy. Just because one is old, and unfortunately single, it doesn't automatically make one oblivious to what goes on in the world. That little scene over there is as old as human existence."

"Well, I'm shocked, and I'm only twenty-four."

"That's why it's good you have me to look after you."

"Hmm, and you do, don't you, beautifully?"

"I do, and I always will. Focus only on me and you will always be safe."

"But while I was distracted, you have actually eaten all the remaining ice-cream! That was hardly fair."

"Watch and learn, darling. Watch and learn."

"You are a wicked lady."

"I know, but I am good company, aren't I?"

"You are, my love. The Best."

And they moved off to walk back across the river towards the Casa Guidi, the home of those most famous of lovers, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

They only stopped en-route to enter one of the many jewellers' shops on the Ponte Vecchio, where Miranda bought an emerald necklace. It wasn't exactly a choker, but fitted snugly round Andrea's lightly tanned neck.

"My girl," whispered Miranda, as she fastened it securely, "My girl".

Andrea grinned, as she looked at herself sideways in the jeweller's mirror and felt Miranda's light kiss on her nape.

"Yes Miranda, your girl, and very happy to wear your jewels, unlike poor Eleonara of Toledo. Ours will be a marriage of true love, not convenience or arranged for any other reason."

"That's good then. And I'm sorry for stealing your share of the ice-cream."

"All forgiven and forgotten," chuckled Andrea, and the two women walked away with their arms tightly round each other, to the slight bemusement of the jewellery shop manager.

"Americanas!" he muttered, shaking his head, but the sale had made him a very happy man. In fact he decided to close early and go round to his favourite bar for a Campari. He might even buy his wife a bunch of flowers on the way home!


	11. An interlude

Author's Note:

Thank you to those who have appreciated the art history! If you would like to share Miranda's enthusiasms, images of all the sculpture and paintings mentioned are freely available on the Internet. The following is just an interlude, of family chat and not too gentle lovemaking. The next chapter will be much more energetic!

xxxxxxxxx

It was late, so late that Miranda could talk to her children in America as they ate a six o'clock dinner in front of the TV at the Sachs place just outside Cincinnati. They were on Skype so she could almost smell the massive triangles of pizzas hovering in front of her as they waved them teasingly.

"What are you been doing today?"

"Horse-riding of course. Patches can now jump 2' 6''!"

Andrea leaned over Miranda's shoulder, tickling her just for fun as she did so, and called out, "Hey, don't forget the poor old fellow is twenty-five. Do take care! If he has arthritis, he may suddenly fall over, with you still on top."

She maybe shouldn't have said that so baldly, as Miranda looked horrified just at the thought, but Cassidy tried to reply reassuringly, "Oh Momma says he's good to go for years yet. She's giving him Bute, and he's off the spring grass so he won't get laminitis."

Andrea was amused to hear ten year old Cassidy now talking like a seasoned horsewoman, but Miranda still had awful visions of the little horse dropping down dead with her child aboard.

Luckily Caroline chipped in from behind another slice of pizza. "We're fine, honestly Mom. I'm riding the same chestnut horse Grandpa borrowed in November, and we've been to the store to buy cowboy boots. We look really cool. We're also learning how to prune apple trees."

"Wow. What else have you done?"

"Well, Uncle Charles has been in touch and sent us a wonderful version of our Christmas Waltz for two cellos and piano. He says he will play it with us at your wedding. We've been practising here a lot. Grandpa and Granny Jen says we sound quite acceptable. That's one of your favourite words isn't it Mom? So what have you and Andy been doing over there?"

"Walking about and looking at wonderful pieces of art work."

"And eating ice-cream," added Andrea. "I am making your Mom really fat."

"You can't do that! Uncle Nigel will be cross. He's been emailing and talking to us about the dresses for the wedding. We're all wearing pale blue and silver, apart from you, Andy. You have to wear white."

Miranda felt that she had obviously not been in the loop with all these emails and phone calls. But she had given Nigel the commission, and she did trust him. It had been a conscious relinquishing of power, to show that she could somehow. And Nigel did have the best taste in New York currently, well while she was away in Europe, obviously! She had taught him all he knew.

"How is Momma's hip healing?" asked Andy, and then chuckled as her grandmother's nut-brown face appeared in the corner of the IPad screen.

"It's mending real well, and the twins have been a godsend, helping me with the chooks. We're fixing up the old hen-hut for this season's young stock at the moment."

Caroline chirped in at this stage. "Yes, and I did the hammering while Cass held the nails. And some of the hens are broody, that means they are having babies, and there have been hundreds of baby chicks hatched out of the eggs!"

"Wow. Hundreds?"

Momma's dry laugh came over the airwaves. "Eight actually. The child rather exaggerates. But another clutch is due out next weekend. You might see them if you get yourselves over here. When are you coming back home?"

Miranda sighed. "Within the week." She wasn't sure whether she was happy or sad. Half of her wanted to stay in Italy for ever. But the sight of her little girls also made her homesick for them, and she longed to be there to hug them. After Easter, school would start up again quickly so she at least would have to go to Cincinnati to collect her offspring before then, even if Andy didn't accompany her.

The skype call had finished with long-distance kissing all round. Miranda had closed her IPad with a rueful smile, but she had been so reassured to be able to talk at length with the little rascals.

"What would we do without the Internet?" she mused. "It seems incredible now that twenty years ago, the idea of talking to people on screen was seen as a fantasy."

"Was it so recent? I don't remember."

"Darling, in the 1980s we were all working on computers the size of tea-chests! And the writing was green on a black screen. We had things called floppy disks to save the data. It was completely primitive. And when I was young in the Sixties I had a permanent blue coloured bump on the middle finger of my right hand from holding an ink pen. You youngsters don't know you're born."

Andrea did an eye-roll to equal Caroline's best and grabbed Miranda round the waist.

"You'll be telling me you used a goose feather quill next. Come here and kiss me, mistress mine, while you still have some energy in your aged old bones."

Miranda was about to punish her soundly for that unkind remark, but then her phone buzzed, and they rolled apart on the bed.

"It's Sophia. I was hoping she'd ring."

Sophia spent twenty minutes effusively thanking Miranda for fetching her over from New York, and explained that she'd spent the last three hours with her Mother. She'd been given a side-room in the Convent and would grab a few hours' sleep before renewing her vigil. It had obviously been a very emotional re-union. Her mother's life still lay in the balance, but the joy she'd expressed on seeing Sophia come through the door was worth a million dollars.

Miranda felt quietly affirmed. Sometimes it was good to be directive. She knew Sophia had stayed away in America for so long she'd developed quite a funk about going home, but now she had successfully made the trip, in time to accompany her mother through her last weeks if that was God's will, (as Sophia would no doubt say.)

Sophia asked if Miranda and Andy could return to Perugia. She would so like to show them her home village up in the nearby hills, and to thank them in person.

"Yes, we will drive to you tomorrow in fact. Maybe we can visit Cortona and Assissi as well. Ciao Sophia, for now."

Miranda switched off her phone, and returned to the task of paying Andrea back for comparing her to some aged relic. This took a little time, but she refused to give short change. Andy was eventually and grudgingly allowed to go to sleep, but pyjamas were forbidden.

So she lay naked apart from her emerald and gold necklace, and her diamond engagement ring, sporting various tell-tale bruises along her shoulders, and what might be mistaken for bite-marks across her buttocks. Miranda had an excellent set of teeth for her age, and did rather like to nibble.

As Andy's head nestled against Miranda's breast, and their hearts beat in concert, Miranda thought of their visit to the Browning house earlier in the day. It had been delightful. But nothing was as wonderful as her life with Andy. You couldn't make it up, the discovery of just how compatible they were. You really couldn't make it up, and if you did, who would believe you?

She quietly drew up the sheet to protect her darling from any night chill, and then joined her in the rolling oceans of oblivion. And around them the red-roofed city of Florence slept as well.


	12. Following St Francis

An early stroll took them through the Giardini Bardini, or the Bardini Gardens, as they were known in English. The hotel manager had recommended they might like to walk there, to visit the famous wisteria avenue with its long tumbling purple blossoms cascading from the archways.

"It is at its best in April. Enjoy it, beautiful ladies!"

He watched them go as they followed his advice. What he had decided not to do was spoil their day by telling them paparazzi had been pestering him on the phone, following a lead that Miranda Priestly had been seen in Florence, and trying to get confirmation from him.

He had denied all knowledge, but he was concerned for his American guests and didn't want to spoil what seemed to him to be a definite lovers' vacation. He had seen Miranda kiss Andrea's upturned left hand the night before, as they took drinks on the terrace, and saw her hypnotic look of absolute longing. It was an unguarded moment of emotion across an otherwise impassive and classically beautiful face. (He already had rather a crush himself, if he was honest.)

Miranda and Andrea walked hand-in-hand under the Wisteria arches, and breathed in the spring scented glory of all the violet coloured blossom.

"I wish we could stay longer. Are we really leaving tomorrow?" asked Andy.

Miranda watched the petals float down onto Andy's chestnut curls.

"Afraid so. But after careful consideration, as they say in books, I think we will miss out Milan. There are too many work-related people I know up there, and I really don't want to get recognised and dragged into meeting them all on this visit. No, I think we should drive directly north-east up towards Venice tomorrow. Perhaps we can call in and visit Verona and Padua on the way."

"Whatever you decide, I know we will be happy. This trip has been quite magical. It's almost enchanted."

"Only because you are here. You shower enchantment everywhere you go."

"Miranda Priestly! What has gotten into you this morning? I used to have to turn somersaults simply to get a tiny nod of approval from you in the old days."

"There are a good many compliments and affirmations tucked up inside me I have never given out to anyone before. I'm learning though, a new way of being. I've learned the hard way that you trap more flies with honey than vinegar."

"Hey, so I'm your little fly am I?"

"No, you are something else altogether. I truly believe you're my soulmate, darling girl. I could still cry when I think of that fateful day when you bounced into my life, how I could have so easily sent you away for good."

"I know. We owe everything to Emily's running ability. I might even tell her that one day.

"Anyway, here we are at the gate again. Would you let your mosquito/soul-mate buy you a cappuccino in that cute looking little café down the street?"

Miranda smiled, and the resulting sunlight flooded Andy's world.

"I would."

"Let's do it then," and Andrea grabbed her hand, and cheekily kissed her ear in a way neither of them would have believed possible a year before.

They left Florence by ten, which gave them two and a half hours to drive the ninety miles or so back to Perugia. This time Andrea drove, so Miranda could enjoy the views round the winding hills and across the lush pastures already prepped for the summer crops.

Vineyards were everywhere, rising up on either side in places, and the characteristic lines of the Italian cypress tree marked the side lanes along to mellow yellow farmhouses with red roofs. The Umbrian countryside was marked by the hill-top towns, each with their towers and church spires.

"It says in the book that the original Umbrians lived round here ten thousand years ago, before the Etruscans. I will never understand how anyone can ever say they are bored when there is so much to learn about this world, not just geographically, but also historically. We know so little, and there is so much to explore."

Miranda should have gone to university, this was what Andrea gleaned from listening to her lover's remarks. Her thirst for and love of knowledge was really remarkable. It was so ironic that she had made her name and fortune in such an ephemeral and seemingly frivolous sector as the fashion industry.

"Did you say to Sophia that we might go on to Assisi from Perugia while we're back there?"

"Yes, I last went there in my thirties, on a fashion shoot if you can believe it. They had a dreadful earthquake a few years ago, but they've completed the restoration now. I'd like to see it since that's happened. All I remember is that it is perched on top of a hill, and the views are phenomenal."

"Maybe Sophia will come with us."

"Maybe. But I don't want to take her away from her mother. That's why she's comeback to Italy after all, and it would be tragic if she wasn't there when her mother died just because we wanted to use Sophia as a tourist guide."

"Well, let's see. Perhaps Mommy has perked up a little overnight."

Andrea didn't know it, but her casual remarks mirrored the truth. When they arrived at the convent gates, and were escorted through to the same ward they had visited two days before, Sophia's mother was sitting up in bed eating an egg salad, and looked a new woman. She was even off the ventilator.

Sophia jumped up from beside her and flung herself at Miranda, who allowed herself to be hugged and even kissed on both cheeks with remarkable forbearance. Her friend was gabbling in Italian, she was so excited.

"Look! It's like a different person. They say her fever has gone, and the lungs are clearing. My little mother! How I wish I could take her back to the States to look after her there."

Miranda and Andrea were both stunned by the improvement in the elderly lady's condition. The nursing sister who had come in behind them said, "God is good. It is indeed a miracle."

Miranda didn't know about that, but she did know what a visit from someone you truly loved could achieve.

"How old is your mother?" she asked Sophie.

"Eighty- three."

"Younger than Momma," whispered Andrea. "There may be another few years in her yet. Eighty is meant to be the new sixty these days."

Despite the marked improvement in Sophia's Mom's health, Andy couldn't help but feel a melancholy in the convent nursing home. There was peace and quiet certainly, and conscientious care, but she sensed that much loneliness and the regrets and pains of old age also dwelled there among the forty or so residents, and the staff, half religious, half lay, also had a tired and rather wistful look about them. This seemed especially so in contrast to the three American visitors, full of life, wearing bright colours, and in Miranda's case particularly, emanating an effortless sense of glamour and style.

It was obvious that Sophia really wanted to stay close to her Momma, so they deferred the visit back to her hill-top village, but she happily came out and took a lunch with them. She was still excited to be back in Italy, and to have a little money in her pocket, for Miranda's bank transfer had been exceedingly generous, far more than she had needed for the airfare.

She did want to show them how grateful she was, so she said, over a plate of honeyed figs and Parma ham, that she had a second cousin in Assisi, whom she had called and whose son would be happy to show them round the city, and also escort them up to the castle above the basilicas in honour of St Francis.

Miranda would secretly have preferred to visit Assisi just with Andrea, but in Italy family was everything, and she knew it would please Sophia to do them what she thought would be a favour.

After lunch they left in good time. Sophia returned to her mother and Miranda took the driving seat in the sports car. It was a mere eighteen miles further, and they were winding up the steep approach road to Assisi within twenty-five minutes of setting off from Perugia.

The quality of air, a fresh shimmering blue in the early afternoon lifted Andrea's spirits from the rather sombre mood into which their visit to the convent nursing home had left her. They parked in the tourist car-park, and then saw an attractive if languid youth sitting on the wall beyond it. He waved, and jumped off the wall. It was obvious, even at first glance that he was, slightly surprisingly, very, very gay.

Andrea thought it was rather amusing to see the transformation on his face, when he realised that this dutiful guiding responsibility imposed on him by his mother, would actually introduce him to the famous Miranda Priestly. Instant energy flooded into him, with a charming blush of excitement in his cheek. Of all the young men in Assisi that afternoon they had stumbled on perhaps the only one who followed women's fashion avidly, not just in Italy, but worldwide. He knew all about Miranda and was overwhelmed by excitement.

Francesco, named after his home-town's most famous inhabitant, introduced himself, and started by almost kow-towing in front of Miranda. He was effusive in a mixture of English and Italian, and Andrea could see that her fiancée was secretly very pleased to be recognised and flattered so ridiculously by this boy, especially as his attentions were completely genuine and spontaneous.

There was no need to say much in response, and actually little space to do it, for Francesco talked all the time. In his care, they walked up the slight incline to the lower Basilica and entered the cool interior. The queue for St Francis's tomb in the Crypt was enormous, so they chose not to join it, but spent time admiring the frescos.

Miranda, as expected, had studied hard before their visit, and between her and Francesco, they explained to Andrea how all the old sureties about the assumption that Giotto had painted them were now up for grabs.

"Some of them might even have been done by Cavallini, the painter whose work we saw in Rome. But it is true that Giotto was the head of the school here, very early on. And he is famous for being the first known painter in the Renaissance to start painting people realistically, rather than like those formal dolls in previous icons."

Even with all the restoration, and annoying crowds of other tourists, Andrea couldn't help but feel a sense of spiritual awe somehow within this enormous shrine to one, very self-effacing, small man who had neglected his own health, died young and shunned any luxury whatsoever. But just as she had wondered what Jesus would have made of St Peter's in Rome, so Andy couldn't imagine what St Francis would have made of all this elaborate building complex.

"I think I would like to visit his tomb," she said, after an hour or so of touring the complex, and Miranda let her go ahead. Francesco was bouncing round her like an enthusiastic puppy, and wanted to talk about the famous Italian designers with whom she was on first name terms. He was only seventeen, and totally charming, so she said to Andy, "We'll be in the nearest café when you come out darling. Call me if you can't see us," and allowed her little disciple to lead her away, to pick her brains, and hear all about his wild and wonderful plans to work for Versace one day.

Andrea was highly amused. The old Miranda would have spat out a young tyro like that as soon as he opened his mouth, but now she seemed simply charmed, and kind. Yes, there was no denying it, Miranda was turning into a kind Empress of High Fashion. Wonders would never cease.

Andy joined the patient queue down the steps to pass by the tomb of St Francis. She might never visit Assisi again, and he was the reason for its whole fame as a pilgrimage site after all. The cool crypt had a quietness about it, despite the milling crowds about, and she thought about the longevity of a simple, good reputation. It was hard to believe St Francis had lived eight hundred years before, and the young Franciscan friars who had been standing on duty upstairs all owed their vocation to that simple man, who had founded a mass movement which had survived so long.

Andy was still searching for a faith she could honestly adhere to. Unlike Miranda, she had not been exposed to wretched evil and loss as a child, and had been raised as a conventional Christian in a comfortably liberal church. She longed to believe that somehow in the universe, love would overcome hatred, and there was a natural justice somewhere, that everything would be resolved. She emerged back up into the afternoon sunlight, not discouraged in this hope, anyway. She was pleased she had visited the tomb.

There was no need to resort to using her phone, for she could see Miranda's silver head of hair at one of the nearby cafes, and yes, there was a gelato in front of her. Caroline was probably justified in worrying about her Mom being able to comfortably fit into her wedding dress, if this carried on.

"Would you like a drink, or anything?" asked Miranda, very happy to see her. But Andrea shook her head. "Would it be possible to go right to the summit and see the castle?" she asked. Francesco said, certainly it was possible, so that is what they did next.

It was late again when Miranda and Andy returned to their hotel. The streets around were still busy, and Miranda, who had a second sense in such matters, knew the paparazzi were out. It wasn't an Italian word for nothing. She could see the shape of long lenses among the crowd of young men hanging about.

She wasn't such a diva as to always expect it, but she guessed they were after her. Her divorce would have been publicly announced in New York, one very good reason why she had been glad to send her children to Ohio, and to whisk Andrea away here. She sat in the car and wondered how best to deal with it.

Andrea might be able to slip past them undetected.

"Go in, sweetie and ask the desk staff if there is a back entrance I can use, away from this crowd of cockroaches. Wear your shades."

"At eleven P.M.?"

"Yes. Then even if they catch you, they can't see your expression. Call me from inside."

Andrea quietly left the car and bolted for the hotel's main entrance. The manager was waiting, and when she explained the situation, Miranda had no need to use the back entrance, as he came out with real Latin fury and along with his doorman literally drove the hovering photographers away, right down the street. The manager then personally opened Miranda's car door and escorted her inside, even up in the lift until they made it safely to the sanctuary of their room.

"Lives of the rich and famous!" laughed Andy. "Who do you think tipped them off, and why are they suddenly interested in you now, when no-one bothered in Rome?"

Miranda kicked off her heels, poured herself a scotch from their stash in the room, and decided to tell her the sordid details of her final divorce settlement. It wasn't a pretty story, but it needed doing. Andy's face went red with fury at one point, then softened to caring concern as she realised how upset Miranda genuinely was. She consoled her in the best way she knew, and in the end, they finished their evening in perfect harmony and contented sleep. It had been a long day.


	13. Padding along to Padua

Andy woke very early the following morning to hear Miranda on the phone to someone, and quickly realised it was her own mother at the end of the line. Early morning in Italy meant the time must be almost bed-time in Ohio, so Miranda had obviously been fretting about the twins and wanted to warn Jenny about possible fall-out from the divorce announcement. She could hear half the conversation.

"So please try to keep them away from the sight of any print media, and if possible cut their googling off for a day or two. I would hope it won't make mainstream news channels, but you never know, if they're short of other scandalous nonsense to splash over the airwaves."

Jenny was no doubt reassuring her that the girls would be shielded as much as possible. She seemed to have an idea how to take them completely away from the outside world.

"A horse-back camping trip? Oh they'll love that. Thank you so much, Jenny!"

" . . . . . . . . . . . . "

"They love you both too. We all do."

" . . . . . . . . "

"Oh and tell Cassidy we are off to Padua today. She is still obsessed with Galileo, and I think there is the actual stool on which he sat to teach physics at the university there. Tell her I'll take a picture of it for her. Remember her fascination with tides up in Provincetown? Well apparently Galileo was one of the first to first start working out tides and the astronomy of the gravitational pull of the moon and the planets."

" . . . . . . . . . "

"Yes, we are both having a splendid time. I would pass you on to Andrea but she's still fast asleep."

" . . . . . . . . . . "

"Bye, Jenny, and thank you so much again. We'll call from Venice, when you're back from the camping trip."

And Miranda turned back towards the bed. She saw her fiancée was sitting bolt upright with her hair in a tousled mop, but her eyes tightly shut.

"Oh darling, sorry if I woke you. Go back to sleep. It's barely six."

Andy fell backwards against the pillows, but opened the bedclothes and pointed to the space behind her. She found the voice to say,

"Come back as well then. How long have you been up?"

"Oh a while. To be honest I woke in the middle of the night, and tossed about a bit."

"Worrying about Stephen?"

"Hmm. An e-mail came through from Deborah about 3 am. Apparently, not having won much more than a hill of beans in the court-room, and being stung for costs, he has gone on a PR extravaganza, hired a big firm of fiction writers to so say tell his side of the story. So watch this space."

"What will you do?"

"For now, nothing. I'm waiting to see if he includes mention of my twins in any stunt, and you, I can't bear the thought of your sweet name being dragged through any dirt. He's bound to grip onto the gay thing, as there's no male phantom lover he can latch on to."

Andy's eyes were still barely open, but she gathered Miranda's warm body close to her own and put her arm possessively round her waist.

"He'll achieve nothing attacking me, because I couldn't care less about his opinion. I am openly, triumphantly out, out, out. Besides, I have a very powerful throw from all those years playing soft-ball, so I can chuck any hand grenades he chooses to lob, straight back over the wall."

"But I wanted to keep you out of it altogether. It's not your fight."

"That's where you are wrong, oh mistress mine. It is very much my fight, and I would feel almost insulted not to be allowed to wear your colours for you if it comes to armed combat. I hate the thought that you have been worrying about this all these months, and you haven't included me in that. Tell me truthfully, if I hadn't been there, complicating your life, would you have filed for divorce from Stephen at all?"

Miranda thought it through for a second or two, and then said, "Yes I would have done. He was an unfaithful scumbag after all. I even once found a pair of lace panties in the backseat of the Lexus. But I confess I was also completely unfaithful, in my mind, with you. I used to come up with the most appalling fantasies of what I might do with you if we were ever alone on a desert island."

Andrea laughed. "Well, if you'd already decided to end the marriage, I'll let you off for not letting me be the other woman. But how about those fantasies? Have we re-enacted them all yet? I only ask for information, you understand."

Miranda buried her head against Andrea's pyjama jacket, and admitted quietly, "Not all of them. I thought some of them should be saved up until after the wedding, when you have safely signed your life away and are completely in my clutches."

Andy put up a finger and twirled it through Miranda's silver locks. "Yes," she murmured lightly, "it's always good to have something to look forward to I suppose. After the wedding, I'll maybe tell you some of my wilder ideas in return."

She felt a definite and delicious tremor of excitement run down Miranda's body in response to this remark. It was probably a good job they were both too sleepy to act on it, for they cuddled back into slumber, and it was past eight o'clock before either woke again.

Leaving Florence filled them both with regret, for there was still so much to see and they only had a few more days before their flight was booked back to the USA. Substituting Padua for Milan had been a good idea for a stop-off before Venice. Miranda knew about the Giotto frescos there, and also, as she'd mentioned before, the connection with Galileo.

Andy went down to the reception desk to ask for their final account and say they needed to check out, while Miranda finished preparing both their suitcases. She positively enjoyed packing and unpacking her clothes, and in making sure Andrea didn't simply toss all her lovely things in a heap into the case.

While she was smoothing out the girl's silky white shirt, the scent of Andy's recently bought perfume, the one she had randomly picked out on their flight over, filled her senses, and she pulled the garment into her face to inhale it. Why she loved the girl so very much was still a mystery to her.

Oh, to be sure, there were plenty of rational answers. To know Andy was to love her, for even Emily had succumbed to her sweetness of nature and complete positivity, but for Miranda it went so much deeper. She knew she was truly bewitched, and would remain so till the day she dropped dead.

All her previously north-faced calm had melted away the day they had met. Andy had woken the fires of passion within her, embers she'd consciously buried beneath the New York streets. At fifty, she felt fifteen again. In fact she was so much better than she had been then, for at fifteen she had felt a violated rag of a girl, still in physical and emotional pain from the rape and having to undergo that horrible abortion.

Until the last few months, Miranda had managed to deal with any real emotional trauma, by refusing to acknowledge its existence. Boring a tunnel out of two failed marriages, and enjoying being known as the biggest bitch in Manhattan had seemed a good way to go.

Until now. Now Andrea had released her from the spell which had frozen her heart. She was now re-born as a warm-hearted, emotional woman, and one by one the tragedies of her early life had been unwrapped and acknowledged. It was a dreadfully painful process, this unthawing, but one from which she knew she couldn't escape.

And now, this final death throe of her marriage to Stephen, this too she had to deal with in a new way. She rolled up the last of Andrea's socks, and kissed them, and as she tucked them into the side of the suitcase, she had a new feeling about his latest thrashing about in the gutter press.

Miranda realised she felt sorry for him, his shallow relationships, and the way he had never truly engaged with either her or the twins. There had also been his snobbery, his cheap view of the world, always in dollar signs, (which made divorce lawyer Geoff look like a philanthropist in comparison,) his use of her purely as a key to unlock a celebrity status he would never achieve alone.

Feeling sorry for Stephen, even as his many nasty insults were still running through her brain, was such a novel sensation she had to sit down on the bed to cope with it. But it was definitely real. She had no appetite for revenge, or fighting back, or countering his campaign. Miranda realised she was cured.

Andrea's love had inoculated her against the virus of always wanting an eye for an eye. She wanted nothing from Stephen, and nothing for him but his own healing and recovery. She genuinely hoped he would find the right partner in the future, that he would no longer be alone, or stuck living with brassy little fortune-hunters.

While she was exploring round the edges of this new way of being, Andy bounced back in with their final invoice, and the news that when they wished to leave, the manager would personally ensure no paparazzi were within five hundred yards of the hotel.

So they gathered their luggage, retrieved the bottle of whiskey from the wardrobe, and left a generous tip for the room maid. With the manager's help, they escaped from the hotel and were on the road north without any further hassles, and the fair April morning was theirs for the taking. It was an easy run of about two and a half hours, and they were in Padua before lunch-time.

"Now, I want to tick a few things off here, amazing and totally authenticated Giotto frescos, and the very stool on which Galileo sat to teach his students."

"It looks an elegant city centre anyway, despite all those industrial sectors we passed coming in."

"Oh yes, the Italians don't tear down their architectural heritage like we do. But what would you like to do? Take lunch first, or do the sight-seeing?"

"How long do we have? When are we due in Rome?"

"Any time we like. It's very near, and we have three days there to enjoy the wonders. I suggest we look for a good quality salad bar, while I finish reading up on Galileo, and then we can pad round Padua to our heart's content for the rest of the afternoon."

Andrea nodded happily. "Yes, let's do that. I am hungry, especially as we rather overslept for breakfast. I'm sorry to be always thinking of food, but there so much of it around here in Italy, and so much of it is wonderful!"

Miranda parked their car, and pushed the switch to bring up the soft-top roof.

"I have made a complete pig of myself over the ice-creams, so I can't talk. I can feel these pants are getting a little tight round the waist."

"Hence your suggestion of a salad bar?"

"I see one over there, with a dessert section as well. We are still on vacation after all."

"Come on then. Let's eat and you can tell me all about Galileo while we do it."

So Miranda let herself be taken by the arm and led towards yet another very tempting restaurant. Her turmoil of emotions earlier in the day was quite forgotten, and surely a walking tour of Padua all afternoon would compensate for one small ice-cream, or maybe two.


	14. Time and Space

Miranda and Andrea stood in the University of Padua and looked up at the preserved teaching podium or platform of the great Galileo, who always claimed the eighteen years he spent as Professor of Mathematics there were the happiest of his life. Andrea, whose skills with the phone camera, were legendary, took pictures to send to the twins, while Miranda told her some of the stories surrounding Galileo.

"You know he must have been a genius from childhood. He started out as a skilled lutenist, because his father was a professional lutenist, even though they had aristocratic connections on his mother's side. Then when he went to university as a young boy, he intended to read medicine. He then turned to physics, and then mathematics, so he was Professor here from the age of thirty until he was forty-eight. He also had some very novel theories about music and airwaves, and did some experiments involving the vibrations of stringed instruments."

Andrea grabbed the guide book, and carried on the narrative as they walked round the city centre, following Galileo's tracks.

"Padua University was famous for being liberal and enlightened. They had anatomy lectures with real corpses. (Ugh, not sure I'd have liked that, but forward thinking no doubt.) It says here it was the centre of elegance and liberal ideas. Galileo's lectures drew crowds in their thousands. Maybe you and I should have lived here. We'd have fitted right in!"

"No darling, we wouldn't. We are the wrong gender. Galileo had a mistress, a woman from Venice called Marina, by whom he had three children, but he never married her. Apparently she wasn't aristocratic enough to satisfy his family's pride.

"Galileo's daughters, who loved him dearly, both were forced into nunneries because they were illegitimate. I don't think either of us would have done well as nuns. I have a real feeling for his daughter Virginia. She stayed close to her father all his life, but it was his one son who was made legitimate and who inherited all his money when he died.

"See the difference between the fortunes of Galileo's two daughters and his son. Virginia became known as Sister Maria Celeste, and she even took on part of his punishment of having to recite the very long five penitential psalms several days every week, so he didn't have to! What a bore that must have been."

"So when did he get into real trouble?"

"After the Paduan period. He moved to Florence and wrote thousands of words challenging the Church's assumptions about astronomy and how the world was made. He was involved in long philosophical and scientific arguments, and these often took the form of published dialogues. He got the wrong side of the Pope, Urban Vlll, who thought he was mocking him. That's really why he fell foul of the Inquisition."

Andrea read on, "After his trial for heresy, he ended up under house arrest for twelve long years until he died aged seventy eight, and he went blind four years before his death, maybe from reading in candlelight all those years. But despite this, he wrote two more major works. He wasn't allowed to leave his house, he couldn't teach, after being one of the most popular science teachers ever, and he wasn't allowed to publish."

Miranda sniffed. "Freedom of speech didn't exist then. But as Galileo pointed out, what is, is. His theories were nearly all proved right, and paved the way for Newton, and then straight on to Einstein. But Galileo also liked making things. He created a really long telescope and charted the bumps on the moon."

"Just like our little Cassidy then. She loves her telescope."

"I know. It's a shame it's pointless to have it up in the town house, with all the reflected glare from New York's lights."

"Would you like to know when the Vatican finally agreed Galileo was right after all, that the earth does actually go round the sun, not the other way round?"

"Yes, tell me."

"1991."

Miranda almost fell off the sidewalk with laughter. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. It says here, in black and white!"

"Another case then of truth being stranger than fiction. Why are people so stupid and slow to admit they are wrong?"

"Well we still have a flat-earth society alive and kicking in America, even after the moon landings. Some people will always argue that their nonsense is right. Scientific method has still to be accepted in lots of bible-belt state schools, don't forget."

"Depressing."

"So what are we going to do next?"

"Let's go back another three hundred years, and catch up with our friend Giotto again. The University had only been founded about eighty years before, when our next place to visit was commissioned. Let's head to the Arena Chapel."

So camera, and guidebook in hand, that's what they did.

The height and fantastic interior decoration of the Chapel took them both by surprise. Three tiers of frescoes covered the walls, framed in mock stone work panels and pillars, with little extra pictures inserted sometimes, to give the illusion of a back room or a real alcove.

Miranda was amazed at the vibrancy and precision of it all, more than a hundred years before understanding of perspective became mainstream in Italian art. The series of paintings told the story, first of the Virgin Mary's birth and upbringing, and then the birth and life of Christ, right until the aftermath of the crucifixion, and then Christ's ascent into glory to judge everyone. There were so many scenes to examine, it took them two hours to go right round three times, and they could have stayed there much longer.

"Choose your favorite panel," whispered Miranda, as Andrea was finally getting tired of looking up all the time.

"I know it's only apocryphal, but I like Mary's parents discovering they could have a baby after all. That seems to be a constant theme right through the Bible, people trying to have children. I am looking at the group of women behind Anna. Who is the one wearing a long black shawl over her head, do you suppose? Why is she there? And the boys behind picking or stealing apples in the background, what's that about? The couple in the centre of the panel really do look married don't they? They are kissing, just like modern people might."

"I like the Lamentation one, with Mary cradling Christ on her knee, and again, a group of anonymous people accompanying her. Two of them have their back to the audience. Almost like stills from a film. And the people have such humanity. They look so solid. It's such a sad painting."

"Galileo must have visited this chapel often enough. I wonder what he thought of the marvellous dark-blue star-studded roof, the heavens above."

"It's certainly epic. I actually think I prefer it to Michelangelo's Sistine chapel."

"Would he have visited Padua to see this?"

"I can't imagine he didn't. This would have been very famous even in those days."

Miranda and Andrea emerged from the Chapel, from the early 14th century back into the twentieth, both feeling a little over-whelmed by the intensity of the experience they'd just had. They felt like time-travellers, not back to the first century AD, but to 1300 which was the setting for all the dramatic scenes behind them.

Miranda kept thinking about the background settings, the furniture, the drapes, the way a curtain was hung from a rail, the surprisingly generous amounts of fabric used for cloaks and women's dresses, the amazing blue and gold midnight sky.

Andy dwelled more on the personalities, the tears of the mothers in the slaughter of the innocents, the shock on the faces of those condemned to hell. It fed her sense of fiction, of empathy, even with the donkey, the ox. Whether it was through writing, music, or in this case, art work, she could see that great creative genius works because it essentially lives through the empathy it engenders in people.

Through it we feel our humanity more clearly, see each other more lovingly, so our heart can reach out to another's heart. The extremely annoying tendency to tears which seemed integral to the human condition, the way people can cry at the sound of a wistful tune in E minor, or at the end of a movie, maybe this is the key to what binds us altogether.

Their short time in Padua made both Andy and her lover a little introspective. Big ideas about time and space filled both their heads as they returned to their car, parked up in a side street off the Piazza dei Signori. They were both rather quiet as they drove the remaining short distance to Venice, to find their final hotel of the road trip.

Their Italian holiday so far had been like a masterclass in art appreciation, well, along with other things as well! Miranda's sex hormones were running on high octane fuel as she gazed on Andy's beautiful profile at the wheel of the Alfa Romeo, and Andrea was still dreaming of fragole and the thought of sampling all the gastronomic delicacies of the Venetian cuisine.

But neither of them had any idea of what awaited them within the watery mysteries of Venice. Their last weekend in Italy was to be a time, neither of them would ever forget, or even, truly understand.


	15. Miranda remembers

The sun was low in the sky when Andrea and Miranda arrived at their Venice hotel, a glorious old converted palace, right next to the Grand Canal. Valet parking had whisked away their car to a site unknown, for the next two days were designed to enjoy the city on foot. Andrea stood on the balcony surveying the amazing scene of the waterway, its traffic almost as busy as Fifth Avenue.

There was just one major difference. Here all the vehicles were boats, or all sizes and descriptions, but the dominant image was, if not of the most powerful boats, of the swan-like gondolas, parading up and down the canal like elegant birds, with the traditionally uniformed gondoliers singing and calling to each other. The play of light on the water, and the silver spray from the wake of the flat bottomed water taxies made everything shimmer. Andrea took off her sun-glasses to get the full effect of the show.

"So this is Venice!" she said, leaning out to look up the canal. "I always knew it would be wonderful, but this is so beautiful. The architecture everywhere is exquisite. Every building one can see! Let's go out exploring immediately, before the light fades."

Miranda came up behind her, putting her chin on Andrea's shoulder, and holding her lightly round her waist.

"It is magical and I'm glad you are impressed. I came on a fashion shoot here once when the Venice Carnival was on, in February, and the city was completely hedonistic and wild. Everyone wore masks, just as they did in the eighteenth century. I was single then, in my twenties, and I won't tell you in whose bed I ended up."

Andy raised her eyebrows in a mock expression of shock. "Won't or can't?"

"Well, can't actually. I took some terrible risks in those days, but I'd just had too much grappa as I recall. I'm much older and hopefully wiser now."

"As long as you now know in whose bed you belong."

Miranda kissed Andy on the side of her neck.

"I do."

"Come on then. Let's go walking!"

And they left their unpacking, grabbed their bags and shades and went out to explore.

Venice is an easy city to cover on foot, in that it is relatively small, an island in itself connected these days by the mainland by a series of long motor and train bridges. Many cities in Italy are elegant, and a delight to visit, but Venice for many of its visitors has an added dimension. It is a city of the most exquisite light reflected in water, as it is criss-crossed by dozens of little canals with tiny streets running between them. It is easy to explore, but also easy to get lost in.

Miranda and Andy made their way to the Piazza San Marco quickly enough, finding it packed out with tourists, even at the end of the day when the great churches and museums had already closed. But when they left the square to explore the area beyond they found themselves in surprisingly silent streets and very quiet small piazzas. Andrea could not help but take dozens of pictures on her phone camera, for every corner seemed to reveal another architectural delight.

Forgetting supper, they wandered on, and eventually crossed the Rialto Bridge over into the Santa Croce neighbourhood. The light from a pizzeria shone warmly out onto the street, and they heard the sound of live music.

"Shall we indulge? Do you realise we haven't had one pizza yet all week?"

"Italian pizzas aren't the carb fest they are in the States. Here they've kept the tradition going of pizza being a poor man's food."

"They still look good to me. Let's share one and have another meal alongside it. Come on, and you can tell me all about your mis-spent youth when you came here in the late seventies. I bet you took drugs then as well. Didn't everybody in those days?"

Miranda began to regret telling Andrea anything, but pushed her inside the little restaurant. It must be serving good food, for it was packed out with locals. They found an alcove table with comforting wooden panels shielding their conversation from any eavesdropping people at the next table, and gave their order. Miranda asked for a Campari and soda, the slightly bitter aperitif which she rather liked, partly for childish reasons, because of its scarlet colour. Andy ordered the old American staple, a coke, much to Miranda's scorn.

"It will rot your guts faster than neat spirit, sweetie. Why do you think I ban all sodas from the children's diet?"

"Oh, humor me this evening. I just feel like a shot of caffeine. Now then spill the beans. I want a bit of recall here. This person you slept with, male or female?"

"Er . . . . female."

"Wow. Good answer. Where did you pick her up?"

"She picked me up, but I perhaps encouraged her. In a bar. A gay bar actually. There were far more of them in those days than they are now."

"What was she like? I mean what did she look like?"

"Andy, it was twenty-five years ago! How am I supposed to remember?"

"Try! Pretend I am a detective interrogating you. And tell me why you went to the bar in the first place."

The waiter brought their drinks, and Miranda took a moment's grace while she twizzled her Campari and soda round with a delicately hand-blown glass straw. She thought for a moment, looked into Andy's eyes, and gathered her courage.

"I went looking for women, I suppose, women I could fancy, who might want me. Gay women. I was living in Paris still, and very lonely. My pretend boyfriend had gone off to New York with his male lover. I'd never been with a girl, and I was curious. Would sex with a woman be as great as I'd imagined?"

"So, what was the bar like?"

"I don't remember much detail to be honest. There were a lot of women there in masks, quite a few in very butch costumes, with one or two outrageous bull-dykes as they used to call them. They weren't my type. But I saw a good-looking woman standing by the bar. She wore designer clothes, and had a shock of gold-red hair. I think she was the one I went towards, but of course it was a long time ago!"

"Did she pick you up?"

"Yes, no messing. She gave me a mask and we went off together, dancing down the street."

"What was her name?"

"She never told me and I never asked. We were up all night and then we went to her room I think. We were two strangers, but I remember she came very quickly on top of me, and then she just fucked me until I passed out. She seemed pretty practised. When I woke the following afternoon, she'd gone. So I left as well, wondering what that had all been about. I had the most god-awful hangover, and a pain in my groin."

"Was she the only woman you've slept with, before me? Don't worry, you can tell me the truth. I won't judge."

Was Andy imagining it, or did Miranda's cheek turned a little pink? But their food arrived, and there was plenty to do in splitting the meals between them, and tucking in. Miranda didn't seem inclined to give out any more secrets, but Andy was on a trail she didn't want to abandon.

"Go on. You're such a damn fine lover, you must have learned those tricks from somewhere."

"You did say you wouldn't judge . . . "

"I won't!"

"Well, when I arrived in New York I didn't know anyone . . . "

"Yes, you said, and you lodged with Gloria. . . "

"Hmm. Well she had picked me up in a bar actually. She took me home with her, virtually over her shoulder. We lived together for three years. Then she got a job on the New Yorker, and I was promoted to Editorial Director at Runway. Work really got in the way. And I thought I had better straighten up and look for a man. I wanted children."

"Wow. Gloria." Despite her previous promise, Andy felt a sharp stab on jealousy for all the good times Gloria might have given Miranda. She had sensed when they'd met up in California that somehow Miranda and Gloria had history. She tried hard to crush any unworthy reaction to the revelation, which after all she had dragged out of Miranda.

"Does Lee know about this?"

"Oh yes. We've all became good friends. Gloria and Lee got together after our affair. No-one else knew. I never told Geoff. You know being a gay woman in public life was never easy. We spent our lives in the shadows, even more than the men. "

"So this Irish woman we both met in Rome, she says she knew you through Gloria. How does she fit in, do you suppose? Was she another of Gloria's lovers?"

"That I don't know. It's a mystery I still don't understand."

"Well, we'll find out eventually. Meanwhile I am going to take a picture of you, with pizza sauce dribbling down your chin, and send it to the twins. It's adorable!"

Andy still felt churned up, so was changing the subject to deflect from her sudden insecurity. She knew she was being very foolish to worry about Miranda's love life from twenty years previously, but she realised just how very much she adored the woman opposite, and how young and unworthy she felt to claim her as her own for the rest of their lives.

Miranda seemed to sense this sudden insecurity. She reached across and took Andrea's hand.

"Honey, Gloria was very kind to a thoroughly mixed-up, silly young woman, and she did teach me not to be scared of physical love between women. But there is nothing between us now except friendship. All my focus, all my love is for you and you alone. I have never felt a tenth of what I feel for you for anyone else, and I never will. OK?"

Miranda's smile, and her intense gaze swallowed 99.9% of Andy's fear and doubt, and she returned the smile in full measure.

"OK."

"Good, now finish your spaghetti putanesca. Oh, and if you must know, I did smoke a little pot when I worked for the circus. But that's all. Your lover isn't a reformed drug-addict."

They squeezed each other's hand and returned to the delicious food. Miranda then had her tenth ice-cream in seven days, and Andrea took a picture of her consuming it. They wandered back to their hotel hand in hand through the shadowy streets, and made it home by midnight.

When they entered the reception area and asked for their key, the night porter passed Miranda an envelope. It had been hand-delivered while they were out, and penned in an elegant italic script. Her name was centred across the middle of the envelope, and when she lifted it to her nose there was a definite whiff of perfume, Madame Rochas, if she wasn't mistaken.

"What's that letter?" asked Andy. "Who knows we're here?"

Miranda opened the cream envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper inside, as they both walked over to the elevators. Then, while they rode the car up to the third floor, she read the note out aloud.

"Dear Miranda and Andrea, It would be of great pleasure to me if I can show you the Venice I know and love. Please let's meet at Sta Maria Gloriosa dei Frari tomorrow at 10am. Warm good wishes, Maggie McIntyre."

Andy very much wanted Miranda all to herself and commented rather brusquely, "What a cheek. We might have all kinds of other things planned. And there isn't a phone number or any other way of responding! Maybe we should just ignore it."

Miranda looked pensive. The elevator stopped and they walked the few yards to their room. Andy flashed down the room key card and they went inside.

Miranda then said, "No, I don't think there's any malevolent intent. Gloria probably worked out our hotel here through Momma, and passed it onto her friend. The Ohio folks have our whole itinerary. If she wants to meet, let's do it, and solve the mystery of who she is, and why she knows about us. She might indeed be able to give us her own unique take on the stones of Venice. The note is quite courteous."

"Well, OK," said Andy a little reluctantly. "But put it down now over there and come here." Miranda's revelations had fired her up earlier, and she was hungry for the taste of her. "I suppose ten o'clock isn't too ridiculously early, as long as you let me make love to you in this great bed all through the night tonight first."

Miranda looked at the sumptuous brocade bedspread, and the huge white pillows, almost gleaming in their expensive glory. The moon was rising up slowly above the Grand Canal, and silver moonbeams came through the windows and danced over the bed. It was a night made for love, and she couldn't think of any better way of putting Maggie McIntyre out of her mind.

"Can we take our make-up off first?" she murmured. "I would hate to smudge those pearly-white sheets."

Andrea stopped and turned and gave a wicked smile. She was taking her shoes off and unwinding the silk scarf round her neck.

"Of course, if that's what you want to do. I'm not wearing any anyhow. But you know how I love to be kept waiting."

It was a direct quote from Miranda's favourite stock of sarcastic remarks, and made her have a frisson of anticipation as she heard her own words come back to her in Andrea's reply. So tonight was going to be one of those nights, was it?

She ran straight for the bathroom, and locked the door. If Andy was in dominant mode, then she needed to be ready. Who would have thought such a "butter wouldn't melt" little mid-western girl could conjure up such blissful terror? She only hoped the walls of the old palace hotel were sufficiently thick for them not to frighten the folk in the next room.


	16. Going Back Ages

The following morning, later than she would have liked, Miranda woke up, feeling decidedly not herself. Andrea's sex games the previous night had been great fun, and she had responded in kind, so when they both finally fell asleep they each felt they had had something of a gymnastic work out.

But now, when she reached for the reassuring warmth of Andrea's body lying next to her it wasn't there, and she sensed an odd distancing from her own body, hard to put into words, but a strange tingling sensation in her head.

She struggled to open her eyes, blinked and then was reassured to see Andy sitting at the desk, industriously writing away on her small notebook computer. She'd been keeping a journal going throughout their vacation and was obviously updating it.

"Hi, sweetie," she called, "Are you OK? What's the time?"

"Eight forty-five. I'm just trying to pin down what happened yesterday. We did so much, in Padua, then driving here and then going out last night."

"I feel a bit weird. Was it something I ate? Are all those ice-creams finally catching up with me I wonder?"

Andrea looked across to the bed where Miranda's head was emerging, topped with a white mop of tousled waves and saw she was wearing her night-shirt, not her own peach satin gown. Now how had that even happened?

She smiled encouragingly, but felt some concern. "When you say weird? Do you feel unwell? Should we cancel this appointment with Maggie McIntyre?"

"No, it's nothing. I'm sure I'm fine. I'll take a quick shower and then we must leave. She said 10 am, didn't she?" And Miranda didn't exactly skip off to the bathroom, but she didn't crawl either. Andy watched her go, with immense fondness. No-one could say Miranda lacked stamina.

While she was ostensibly writing a perfectly presentable travel blog, Andrea had also been busy, processing her feelings about Miranda's revelations from the night before. She couldn't help but still feel churned up about them. The 0.1% of angst and jealousy, which was the residue of her shock on learning about Gloria, was threatening to grow back into something bigger, and so possibly spoil their day.

She knew they had only been together as lovers for three years, and that was more than twenty years ago, but imagining how it might have been, how Gloria might have made Miranda scream for joy once upon a time, felt like a sore scrape on Andy's heart. She hadn't feel anything remotely like this when she had met Geoff, who had been married to Miranda for almost ten years.

This was a nasty, unworthy little attack of jealousy. She almost wished she didn't know, that she hadn't pushed Miranda into telling her.

Within ten minutes, Miranda emerged, fresh as daisy, wrapped in the large velvet-soft bath towel provided by the luxury hotel, and she handed Andy the generous sized bottle of body lotion she'd found in the bathroom.

"Will you give me a treatment, darling, rub some into my shoulders?"

Andy stood up and placed Miranda on her chair, then stripped down the towel until it just looped across Miranda's lap.

"Just close your eyes, and enjoy it darling."

She pooled the lotion into her hands and began to smooth it over Miranda's exquisite shoulders, ogling her breasts from above as she did so. Then she placed her thumbs at the back of Miranda's neck and worked down her upper spine.

"Oh, wonderful. Even better than the hot shower."

"Do you feel less weird?"

"My head is tingling that's all. But the touch of your fingers, the smell of the body lotion, they are both relaxing me so much, I'm sure I'll feel fine soon."

"When we come back here later this evening, I'll give you a full body massage, I promise." Andy purred, determined Miranda should never know how jealous she still felt about a long ago love affair.

"Thank you my darling. Now I must dress, and you should shower. We need to go very soon."

"Yes Miranda, my goddess beyond compare."

And Andy ducked as Miranda tossed the towel towards her.

They walked the mile or so from their hotel across the city towards the huge church which had been mentioned on the note. Miranda's unerring sense of dress-codes meant that she never entered churches with bare arms or legs, and even covered her hair with a silk scarf on occasion. She now looked as immaculate as ever in a Bill Blass fitted dress and jacket, and wedge-heeled peep-toed sandals. Andy trotted behind in a red linen dress and a fine wool wrap, her leather shoulder bag holding both their valuables and I Phones.

They were heading into the San Polo district across several small canals, and soon stood looking up at the vast façade of the Church, known to all by its shortened title, The Frari, as several neighbouring church bells struck 10.

"I wonder why she's asked us here," whispered Andrea.

"Well we'll known soon enough," replied Miranda. "Look, here she comes! That's the same person who gave you the bill-fold in Rome, for the Monteverdi concert, isn't it?"

"Yes. She looks rather better dressed today though."

Their mystery acquaintance bore down on them, and held out her hands, taking both theirs in a kind of group handshake. At least she didn't do all the multiple kissing routine, beloved by the Italians. Miranda was grateful for that at least. She was dressed in several layers of linen smocks and a long voile scarf, but her grey hair was smoothed back under a headband, and she looked sane, at least. Not exactly a mad stalker.

"Miranda! Andrea! We meet again. I am so happy to see you safely here. I was worried you might not make it."

"Why not? Your instructions weren't complicated."

Andy could sense that Miranda was adopting her ice-queen chilliness of demeanour when strangers grew too familiar. But Maggie seemed oblivious.

"You must be wondering what this is all about! Gloria simply wanted you to have a special time while you were in Italy, and set me the task of providing it for Venice. I am here writing my book on Monteverdi and his contemporary composers."

Andy had a secret wish that Gloria had kept right out of their Italian adventures. In fact, while she liked her as a person, she didn't mind if Gloria kept completely out of their lives altogether in future. It was the nearest thing to an unworthy thought she had had since she was twelve.

Miranda was trying to establish some firmer information. "How do you know Gloria? She has never mentioned you to me."

"Oh, we go back ages. I did a year at Columbia University in the nineties. We haven't seen each other in a long time, but we correspond regularly."

"You gave Andy the flyer for the concert in Rome, but we didn't see you there. Had you intended to go yourself?"

"No, sadly I was needed elsewhere. But now, if you can spare some time this morning, I would like to introduce you to my hero Monteverdi. He's in here."

"In here? Isn't he dead?" Andy's jealous thoughts were making her stupid, and she just knew Maggie would get back to Gloria with how ignorant Miranda's silly fiancée was. Insecurities flooded over her like an April shower.

But the woman replied with a nod and a smile. "He sure is, but this is where they buried him, and his spirit surely lives on here, more than in St Mark's where he was in charge of the music for many years."

They entered the vast building and saw the light flooding in through the high windows. An attendant passed them each an information sheet, with a plan of the church, and a list of all the famous tombs and art work.

"Titian is buried here, as are several of the Doges, but Monteverdi is here as well, and that's what makes it my place of pilgrimage. His music transcends time and place."

They slowly walked round the Basilica, pausing just before the main choir area, for there was a rehearsal happening for a recital.

"They are singing from Monteverdi's eight book of madrigals," whispered Maggie, as she pointed out the quartet of singers, whose voices rose and echoed off the high pillars and seemed to ascend right up into the ceiling.

"So much of Monteverdi's sacred music might have been performed here over the years of his own lifetime, and in the four hundred and fifty years since. But these are secular songs. He is considered the father of opera, you know."

"The music is lovely," murmured Andrea, closing her eyes to listen. Miranda too seemed transported away by the floating sadness of the piece she could hear. It increased the tingling in her head she had felt earlier, and she felt behind her for a church pew, so she could gracefully sit down without wobbling.

Maggie exchanged a few words with a sound recordist standing nearby, and then returned to say, "These artists are to give a recital of Monteverdi madrigals and some sacred music tonight. Would you like to return with me and listen to it?"

Both women nodded, and she smiled. "Good, let's reserve our tickets on the way out."

They continued round the church, and Miranda realised with some quiet pride, that her recent home studies meant that she knew more about Titian, Bellini and some of the other painters on the walls of the church, than Maggie did. So she resumed the narrative. The woman was obviously brilliant at Italian and early music, but not a polymath. She didn't know everything. This was oddly comforting.

Miranda told Andrea about Bellini, one of whose large paintings was on the wall where it had probably stayed for five hundred years.

"Bellini the painter, not the cocktail?" quipped Andy.

"Yes, but it was named after him! It originates in Venice. Prosecco and Peach puree."

"Right."

"Bellini lived a hundred years before Monteverdi and Galileo. He takes us back into the Renaissance, to around 1500. He taught Titian how to paint."

"Why is Italy so full of brilliant painters? I don't understand."

"No," said Miranda. "I'm not sure I do either. Maybe it's the quality of the light, and the culture, which applauded scholarship, and learning, and beauty."

"Despite the wretched domination of the Church?"

"Yes, but you have to remember. In many cases it was the popes and the Bishops who commissioned all the artists and composers, who inspired the writing of all the Masses. You can't easily abstract the finished works from their culture."

They moved slowly away from the Bellini towards the main door. Miranda looked towards Maggie, who was consulting her wristwatch.

"Darlings, I have to go. I'm so sorry. I have a slot at the library to consult the archives, but I'll meet you again for the recital just before eight this evening. Concerts always start later here. Do enjoy the rest of your day."

And within a few moments, she was gone. Miranda and Andrea walked out of the church into the bright sunshine of the wide square with the same name. "Well, a pleasant woman," said Miranda cautiously. "And obviously a scholar. Maybe I'll call Gloria later and confirm her story."

Andrea gave a little jump, and then hung onto her arm. "No, don't bother. Everything's fine here. Why don't you let me buy you a Bellini as a before lunch treat?"

"It's rather early in the day for alcohol."

"Oh come on. We're here to have fun aren't we?"

Miranda looked hard at Andy, who sounded a little on edge. She wondered if her ill-judged revelations the previous evening had upset the girl more than she realised. It must have been a shock when your goddess was revealed as just a common or garden floosy.

Hurting Andrea was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, and it had been gnawing at her conscience for some time that she hadn't been forthright about her previous relationship with Gloria. She'd wanted Andrea to meet her old friend and lover, and like her, but in California for her birthday she had chickened out of admitting they hadn't simply been friends in the past. Andy's sense of self-worth was a fragile, gentle little flower despite her apparent confidence in bed, and Miranda maybe hadn't handled the disclosure very well.

She kissed her fondly on the cheek, and gently pushed back the curls from in front of her eyes.

"I agree to Bellinis instead of coffee, as long as you let me tell you all about the next places we are visiting. More Bellini paintings I've read about. And then we will go to St Marks and the Doge's Palace. There is so much to see, and we can only scratch the surface."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, I will take you to Murano, to see the glass blowing studios, and buy you some lovely red glass beads."

Andrea sighed and rolled her eyes, in mock exasperation at Miranda's wish to spoil her. But her face looked merry again, and Miranda was grateful. Her own weird feelings of distancing from reality had subsided as well. Everything would be fine, she was sure.


	17. Something very weird

Fortified by two long Bellinis, and one of Venice's delicious quiches, as they had missed breakfast at the hotel, Miranda and Andy decided to pack as much of the treasures of Venice into the rest of the day as possible. They were swallowed into the crowds in St Marks but Andrea was able to see some of the golden mosaics which Miranda loved. Something about the fine intricacy of the craftwork involved in creating such huge pictures appealed to the perfectionist in Miranda, with her love of detail. She quoted Michelangelo at Andrea. "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."

But the crowds in St Marks's and in the Doges' Palace finally drove them back outside, and they headed for another very famous church, just round the corner. The Church of San Zaccaria was full of art treasures, and enough gold leaf to satisfy even Miranda.

It also housed one of the most luminous paintings in Venice, the Serene Madonna altarpiece by Bellini. The church was blessedly almost empty, and the light pouring in through the round windows landed right on the faces of the people in the painting.

They were four saints, two men and two women standing round the Virgin with the Christ child on her knee, in a very ornate stone built temple. Maybe the female saints were there, because the church had originally been part of a women's monastery, for aristocratic nuns, said Miranda.

Andy read the information board, and pulled a face. "Oh dear, it says here the saints are St Catherine and St Lucia. They are each holding symbols of their torture and the way they died. St Catherine has the wheel she was broken on, and poor St Lucia is holding a dish with her eyes in it! Presumably she was blinded before she was killed. How horrible."

"Yes it is. But at least they are there, speaking up for themselves. It's unusual. And look at the angel sitting on the steps in the front. He is playing the viol, just like Monteverdi played, and see how the light catches his face. It almost looks as though he could jump out of the painting and join us here. I cannot believe this painting has hung here for five hundred years. How many people must have stood as we are now and gazed on it. It's like a window onto another world. If only we could step through."

Miranda's face had a pearly light of its own as she looked up at the altarpiece. Andrea wondered about her, whether she was still feeling dizzy. She took her arm and drew her gently to one side. She suddenly felt very protective of her mistress-goddess, who looked such a small woman in the centre of all this magnificence and history.

Miranda shook herself back into the present. She had the ability to focus so acutely on something, it made her who she was. She was single-minded when she needed to be, to the exclusion of everything else, and Andy, with her wrap-around multi-tasking abilities, and outside awareness of a million things happening at once was the perfect foil for her, but they certainly looked at the world in a different way.

When they eventually left the church, Miranda was still thinking about the exquisite depiction of the angel's fingers playing the viol, while Andy was still angry about the awful way St Lucy had met her death. She hoped it was just a legend, but she feared not.

However, the day was sunny and warm, all of Venice lay at their disposal, and once she had confirmed that Miranda's dizzy feelings didn't seem to be anything to worry about, Andy took her arm and dragged her over the Accademia Bridge to explore the other side of the canal. They walked as far as the Peggy Guggenheim gallery where they enjoyed tea in the garden, after Miranda sniffed her way round the renowned collection of modern art work in the American heiress's collection.

"Not my cup of tea," she said disparagingly, using the old British expression, as she consumed the very same drink from a fine china cup. "All those careless daubs and drips. You cannot compare it to the art we have seen in other places here."

Andrea chuckled, and saved up the expression to tell Nigel later about Miranda's assessment of all post 1900 art. "Daubs and drips."

"OK, honey, well let's go into the Accademia galleries then, and you can put me right about what's in there, if you feel up to it."

Miranda smiled. She was relieved that Andrea seemed to have recovered from the shock of hearing too much information about Gloria. But she was sensitive enough to know, that when Andy really thought it through, there was likely to be another explosion of rightful fury at not being told the truth about her when they had first been introduced.

She felt very guilty, not about her previous love-life, but about concealing it, but there was nothing she could do now but brace herself for a real period of being in the dog-house. This would be a new and uncomfortable place to sit, as Andrea had barely said a cross word to her since they had first met, as boss and minion.

The girl had never retaliated to her icy taunts and controlled fury, even in the old days. She had simply punished Miranda's many cruel put-downs by returning them with extra sweetness, and thus rendered them pointless, disarming her far more effectively than if she'd fought back with sulks or a temper tantrum. The few tears Miranda had glimpsed her shedding on a rare occasion, had stabbed into her own soul, as she realised all her haughty attempts to push Andy away had simply wounded herself, and made her love the kid even more.

The very idea that Andrea could ever stop loving her, now filled Miranda with terror. She looked across at the engagement ring on her young lover's left hand, matching her own, which she never removed, even to wash or sleep, and clung to a faith that she could add a gold band to it within a month.

Andy misunderstood her silence. "Are you well, darling? Would you prefer to go back to the hotel to rest until this evening?"

"Oh no, not at all. I was just thinking how much I adore you, and how that shade of red really suits your skin-tone. Let's finish our tea and do as you suggest. We have plenty of time to look in the Accademia, and as you might expect, I have a little wish-list of paintings in there I would like to see and show you."

And she put down her tea-cup and stood up to go. The crowded tea-room actually fell silent as she passed regally out. She looked so like an A list celebrity that the largely American crowd of dressed-down tourists all felt they had seen someone famous, though they couldn't quite figure out whom.

Andy smiled at the room encouragingly as she followed her through the door. She knew just how they felt. But Miranda had slipped away oblivious of the effect she was having. In many ways, she was not a vain woman at all, and Andy suspected she never knew just how beautiful she was.

When they eventually returned to the hotel Miranda was feeling light-headed again, and wondered if they should cancel going to hear the recital. She didn't want to embarrass Andy by fainting as she had when she'd realised Charles was probably her brother, at his recital back in California. That had been mortifying. She lay on their bed now for twenty minutes with her feet raised up on a pillow, and thought it through.

No, having bought the tickets and promised Maggie they'd see her again, she decided to take a chance and return to the Frari for the evening. She didn't feel ill exactly, just out of herself. It was a very strange sensation.

She kept thinking of the angel in San Zaccaria, almost as if she could hear the music he was playing. In fact this whole trip to Italy had so heightened her artistic sensitivities that when she looked at colours she could hear music, and when she heard music she could see colours. Maybe her brain was simply becoming overloaded.

Andrea was consulting her phone, and heard from the twins by way of a text message sent from the top of a hill in Ohio, according to Caroline. They were having a ball, camping out with the horses, she said, and Grandpa Richard had taken the horse trailer thirty miles further away from the city into some forest tracks and glades. Granny Jen and Grandpa Richard had one tent, and they had another. It all sounded fine, and with an April heatwave in Ohio, they hadn't felt the cold at all.

"Cassie's still obsessed with the ponies," she read, "But that's OK cos then she doesn't mind doing most of the feeding and grooming. Please keep Mom safe, and see you soon. We'll be returning home to the ranch the same day you fly back into New York." It was all in text shorthand, but Andy could translate.

Andy relayed this news to Miranda. "No mention at all of your divorce, so Mom must have worked her magic. Bless her, she's keeping them away from the news for the whole time until we get back. But a break in the backwoods might just be doing her and Dad a power of good as well. They both work far too many hours and rarely take a vacation."

She texted a long and loving message back, and sent it pinging off into the ether.

Miranda did some stretches while lying down, and then jumped out of bed, prepping herself to sally forth again. They walked the mile or so back to the Frari Church by 7.45, and entered, having met up with Maggie in the doorway. She was still floating about in linen clothes of an indeterminate era, and with her scarf wrapped several times round her neck.

She had found them three good seats at the end of a row near the front, from where they could see all the performers. The singers had been joined by a quartet of viols, the precursor to a string quartet, and Miranda was reminded once again that she was blessed to have a brother who was a virtuoso cello player.

She wondered if Charles could play the viola de gamba as well. She longed to see him, as his scheduled visit to New York in March had had to be postponed due to a fire at one of the venues. They settled down to listen to what promised to be a popular recital, for the great church was more than three-quarters full.

It was after the first set of songs that Miranda began to sense that something was going on very, very strangely inside her head. The music seemed to be penetrating more and more into her brain, sweetly, but almost drowning out her own breathing. And the lights, the great sweep of the pillars, the whole interior of the church began to wave up and down, undulating in time with the ground bass of the music.

The tingling feeling she had had before in her head was now spreading throughout her body. She felt she was losing her balance, and reached out her left hand in fear to grasp Andrea's hand next to her. For a few seconds she couldn't feel it, and began to panic, as though she was floating off the floor.

Immediately, Andy said quietly but intensely, "Don't worry. I've got you! Then, she could hear Andy begin to panic a little as well. "Oh my God what's happening? It's affecting me as well." She grabbed Miranda's fingers and tugged her close.

With their hands entwined, they clung to each other as the only sure thing, for the whole of their surroundings including the oblivious Maggie McIntyre, began to shimmer and shake. It could have been an earthquake, but Miranda could see that no-one else around them in the Church was affected.

She began to feel herself transforming into something other than a sensible New Yorker in 2005. Her identity became something other than she recognised. She was a woman listening to music, but apart from that?

As the polyphonic singing wound its way round the pillars, the very air around her, the very smell of the church seemed to change, to be transformed. The chair under her disappeared, but she was definitely sitting on something. She looked down and there seemed to be some sort of rough bench beneath her now, and the lights, the lights changed to candles. Her hair seemed very long, her clothes likewise, she seemed almost smothered in layers of wool and silk. Who was she? Where was she? Damn, when was this? Miranda would have cried out, but her power of speech seemed to have disappeared.

Andy meanwhile, also tried to speak again, to cry out even, but her voice was swallowed up in the churning atmosphere, the music and the unfamiliar scary sense of displacement. All she remembered were Caroline's words in the text message, "Please keep Mom safe", so she clung to that thought and held tightly onto Miranda's hand, even as she felt her being pulled away from her. Something was tugging Miranda into another time, another dimension. She could feel the magnetic pull, but absolutely refused to give up clinging to her.

Even with the terror of it, there was something liberating in this sense of disembodiment. Miranda felt she was almost flying now, even while staying in her place. The other members of the audience were just shadows, only the music, and the incessant feeling of air waves moving around her seemed real.

And Andy as well of course, Andy's hand in hers, strong, warm, steady. Andy was grounding her. Andy would keep her safe. She felt like a kite with Andy holding the string. The music from the early seventeenth century was luring her to some place apart, some lovely place. But she knew she had to stay in her own time, to return to her own children, to marry Andrea, to be who she was.

The "weird thing," (which was how she and Andy would both call it ever after,) lasted for Miranda maybe fifteen minutes, and while it was happening to her she was trapped, motionless to the outside world's view, but floating between planes of consciousness in a way she could not explain in any logical way.

Then the set of madrigals finished and a halftime break was called. The world mercifully suddenly stopped undulating and spinning. Her chair was once again her chair. The lighting was once again reassuringly electric, and the humans around her regained their bodily forms. The scents in the air stopped being musty and smelling of cloves. She looked down at her own sharply cut clothes, and felt her short bob.

Andrea regained her ability to speak. She hung onto Miranda for dear life and whispered fiercely. "It wasn't just you! I felt it too, maybe not as strongly, but it was definitely there. We were being pulled into something very strange, perhaps another reality, maybe another time even."

Miranda just stared intently at her. She couldn't work out what to say or how to react. It was all too intense. But sensible Andy knew what she needed, to find some fresh air, to get outside, and find some food before going back to the hotel.

She made their apologies to Maggie, who by now could see that Miranda looked very pale and close to fainting. Maggie wanted to call the emergency water ambulance and take them back that way, but Andy managed to dissuade her.

"No, we'll just find something to eat and return slowly to our hotel. You return inside and enjoy the second half of the concert. Miranda's just a little tired. It's been a long day, and we haven't eaten. You know jet lag is a funny thing, it may even be that. The music was lovely, but I think we've had enough."

No way was she going to discuss with a stranger what had happened to them. Out through the great main door and across the piazza, she led Miranda by the hand, finally exchanging a nonchalant wave with Maggie as if nothing much had happened, and then walking firmly forwards through the little winding streets with Miranda tucked on her arm.

Only when she could feel her beloved's heartbeat steadying and the colour returning to her face did she pause, and led them both to a table outside a taverna. A waiter was on to them immediately and she summoned up enough Italian to order two expressos, and two long cold glasses of still water.

"No," croaked Miranda, "San Pellegrino please, I think I need the bubbles." He disappeared inside, and Miranda gave a long shiver. "You did feel it? It wasn't just me?"

"No, I definitely felt it. Maybe not as intensely as you, but it was definitely something. Our whole world wobbled for almost fifteen minutes. It was something to do with the music. I think it lifted you, and then me, up into itself somehow. It was as though time wrinkled back. Something was pulling you, but I wasn't going to lose you, not when I'd just told Caroline I'd keep you safe."

"I could have gone. If it wasn't for you holding on, I might have gone."

"But you didn't. You're safe with me."

"How can we explain it? Was it my fault?"

"No, of course not. You are just sensitive to the vibrations somehow."

"I always thought I was a very insensitive woman, brutal almost."

Andy raised her eyebrows. "You? You're a good actress maybe, but you are the most sensitive person I know, and the most cultured."

"Then perhaps I've just overdone it, gazing into Renaissance pictures too much. Too much Monteverdi."

"But I felt it too, remember. It wasn't just subjective. Something definitely happened. I don't think we can understand it right now. I think we just have to ponder on it. And maybe get some supper inside us. One thing I do know is that you're not yourself when you're hungry."

The waiter returned with their coffees and water, and they asked him for a menu. Miranda went for a spaghetti carbonara, with enough eggs and cream to weigh down a baby elephant, and Andy chose the sea-food linguini.

"Perhaps it was jet-lag after all," pondered Miranda, as they slowly finished their food. "It can play tricks with your brain."

"I only said that to reassure Maggie. We've been in Italy for eight days now. How are you feeling now, anyway? Your colour has returned."

"Much better, darling, really. And my head isn't tingling at all."

"It was a very weird thing, that's all I can say."

"Yes, very weird. But rather magical as well. I can't begin to understand it. Shall we finish with a gelato?"

"Is there a flavour you've not tried yet?"

"Yes, pistachio, and damson."

"Go on then. I won't tell."

"Thank you darling. You know I do love you."

"I love you as well, Miranda, from the toe of your boots to the top of your beautiful silver head."

Miranda smiled and felt reassured. She didn't want Andy to think she was being forced into marrying a mad woman.

"I'll find out if they have pistachio then."

And she beckoned to the waiter.


	18. Moonlight on The Water

Miranda was fine after they left the taverna, fine walking back with Andrea to the hotel, fine until she went into her bathroom, stripped off her shoes and clothes and stared at her reflection in the full length mirror. Then she didn't feel fine at all.

She looked at herself in the glass and for a split second remembered those moments in the church concert when she had not even recognised her own body, felt she was sliding into another personality even, definitely losing contact with the present day. It was with an all- encompassing sensation of terror that she wondered once again if she was going mad. But it only lasted just a second, like an after-shock, and when she looked again, her own face looked out at her perfectly normally.

"Get a grip, girl," she told herself, and steadied her finer feelings by doing something much more normal. She observed her naked body with a severely critical eye, and even pinched at the inch of flab at her waistline. Yes, definitely piling on the pounds there, Miranda. This orgy of ice-cream eating definitely has to stop. Being bossy, fashion and body image obsessed, "silly Mommy" Miranda again, actually made her feel much more cheerful. She would banish her anxieties about the weird stuff by not thinking about it any longer.

She took a quick hot shower, and then, having dried herself in one of the wonderfully luxuriant hotel towels, wrapped herself up in the provided robe hanging on the door. She scooped up the lovely Armani styled body lotion from the morning before, and went off to persuade Andy to keep her promise about a full body massage.

Andrea was doing floor exercises, nurturing already perfect toned abs, but as she saw Miranda's pretty feet walk past her head, she looked up, grinned and remembered what she'd pledged to do. She jumped to her feet, and tossed the pillow she had used to put under her hips back up onto the bed.

"Lie down here, on your tummy," she said, pointing to the bed, and went to relieve Miranda of her robe. She then pulled back the covers so Miranda could enjoy the smooth coolness of the high-count cotton sheet, and watched as she lay down on her front on the bed and turned her head sideways on the pillow.

"God, you're beautiful," she whispered, and then wickedly dripped a series of little drops of the lotion all down Miranda's spine. "Stay there, while I finish undressing," she said, for she was still in her bra and pants, and they suddenly felt superfluous. Then, as naked as her mistress, she gently sat on the top of her legs and leaned forward.

"I am going to make you feel very, very good indeed," she breathed, and rubbing her hands together a little to take away any chill, bent forwards and began to smoothly massage Miranda's back.

The groans and even moans of appreciation from the bed encouraged her no end, so when the neck and back were finished, she then scooted south, poured out more lotion and kneaded and massaged Miranda's very attractive bum and upper legs.

"Hmm, sighed Miranda, almost asleep and becoming totally relaxed. "I certainly needed this, after the evening I've had," she murmured.

"We're nowhere near finished yet," replied Andy. "I'm going to switch off the lamp while you turn over, so I can do your front without you staring up at me and distracting me."

Miranda protested, but turned as the room fell into darkness, and all she could sense was the teasing and terribly arousing hands of her lover, the scent of the perfumed lotion, and the quiet surety of both their breathing, rising and falling almost in perfect time with each other. By the time Andy finished, she had indeed given Miranda a full body massage. Then they both slept like babies right through until morning.

"It's our last day in Venice," announced Miranda next morning, unnecessarily really, but Andrea sighed dramatically and endorsed the feeling. "Our last day in Italy. This time tomorrow, we'll be waiting at the airport for the flight out. But we will come again, won't we?"

She hoped Miranda would be cheerful and say, yes they would, that the unnerving experience they'd had the previous evening, wouldn't make her stay away for the rest of her life. It was really too wonderful a country not to revisit.

"Of course we will," replied Miranda, "Perhaps with Charles, perhaps too with the twins next time. People like children here, and by this time next year, or when school is out in the summer, they will be of an age to soak up so much of the culture. We could come over to Verona for the opera festival perhaps."

Andy was grateful how positive she sounded. They had ordered breakfast through the room service kitchen, and were now sitting by their balcony, wrapped up in their robes, enjoying the coffee and croissants, as well as a plate of cold meats and cheeses, and an enormous bowl of strawberries. Miranda, a reformed sinner when it came to calories, was working her way through strawberries without the suggested Chantilly cream, and drinking black coffee in a long glass cup. Andrea was eating crunchy white bread rolls, smothered in butter and cherry jam.

Weird stuff was over. Normal Miranda was on parade. Andy felt confident enough to talk about their wedding plans.

"You know we have less than four weeks from tomorrow until the great day. I want us to write our vows together, before we meet up with the celebrant, and we are supposed to go back up to the Cape to finalise arrangements."

They had decided to have the wedding and the reception at the Windhover Inn just outside Provincetown, the same venue where they had stayed, along with Emily and Serena, the first time they had visited Cape Cod together. There was a nice irony about that, when Serena had brought Emily along to 'out' them, and had ended up being outed herself. (A.N. As in Clued Up) It had sufficient rooms to accommodate every one of their friends and family, central to sharing their joy, and Andy had sweet-talked the two women who ran the Inn into making over the whole place to them for their wedding party.

Miranda didn't totally discourage her, but said firmly, "Look darling, all that belongs to the next few weeks. If we have just one day left here, I want to make it just about us, here and now. Give me one last day in enchanting Italy with my enchanting companion."

"O.K." laughed Andy, "So what's on the cards then?"

"Let's take the water bus over to Murano and the other islands near it. It's a perfect day for a trip across the bay, and I want to show you round the glass-blowers' studios."

"Do you think we'll hear again from Maggie McIntyre?"

"Oh, she's probably lost patience with us, so I wouldn't think so. She doesn't know how to contact us apart from leaving notes, and we don't have her number either, or her address."

Thinking about Maggie made Miranda a little twitchy, because it reminded her of Monteverdi and his far too powerful music. Maggie also reminded her of Gloria, and she certainly didn't want to bring her up again in conversation any time soon. Gloria was a wonderful woman, a fine writer, and a wise counsellor, but she and Andy had enough to think about, without bringing her old lover back into their lives just yet. Miranda wanted Andy to want to carry on being in a mood simply to kiss and cuddle her, not give her a well-deserved good telling off.

So they breakfasted, bathed, dressed and took the nearest bridge over to where the water-buses left for Murano. As the boat pushed off from the dock, the damp marks high up on the walls of nearby buildings showed where the earlier high tides of January and February had left Venice inundated in its by now far too frequent annual floods.

When they stepped off the bus at the second stop on Murano, they could see the island was even more vulnerable, being nearer the open ocean. Most shops still had sandbags piled outside ready, and also large wooden shutters which would be regularly closed against the winter storms.

They strolled down the main street, past a dazzling array of jewellery shops and art galleries, and amused themselves very much before entering one of the several glass making factories, still operating on a similar pattern to those of four hundred years before.

"Why are they concentrated on Murano?" asked Andy, and Miranda replied. "The blowers were told to go over here so Venice wouldn't be at such risk from catching fire. The furnaces are seriously hot! But in the Middle Ages the City fathers also wanted to keep all their secrets patented just for them, so they refused to let glass blowers move away to other parts in Europe. Quarantining them on an island made it easier.

"Did you know, by the way that Venice was the access point to Europe for several terrible plagues? In 1630 it lost a third of its population, 50,000 people in one year. The population plummeted down to 100,000."

"That was still a very big city for those days."

"Yes, and the hotel staff were telling me, it's now even lower, at around 65,000. People can't afford to live in the old palaces, the rents and property prices are just too high, and anyway who wants to get flooded all the time? People prefer to live in Mestre or other towns on the mainland."

"I wouldn't mind a cute cottage here. It's so beautiful with all the painted pastel coloured houses."

"Isn't it? I think they must have been either for the glass-blowers, or for fishing families. Now let's go in here to see how the glass is spun into vessels and all the other things."

They entered a prominent studio and joined a small party for a tour of the museum and a demonstration of the glass-blower's skill. It was very warm inside, and the blowers were stripped off to the waist, manipulating the long pipes down which they blew the glass into perfectly round or oval glassware, vessels. To amuse everyone, the chief blower then made a little flying horse out of glass, something he must have done a thousand times, but Andrea was still delighted. She turned to Miranda and saw that she'd had exactly the same idea. "Cassidy would love one of those!" they both said simultaneously.

In the inevitable gift shop next to the studio, they bought the twins an animal each. Cassidy's little flying horse was carefully wrapped in a cocoon of bubble wrap, and for Caroline, Andy chose a delightful leaping dolphin in blue glass, which was also securely parcelled up.

Then Miranda pulled Andrea off on another quest. She had recently featured Italian jewellery makers in an edition of Runway and remembered that there was an especially elegant studio, using glass and crystals, and gold leafed copper, based in Murano. She talked to the owner on the phone and asked for a range of good photos for the article.

Andy looked ravishing in the emerald and gold necklace she had bought her in Florence, but if one was good, why not buy another? She pushed Andrea before her into the shop, and was gratified to be recognised by the owner-craftswoman at once.

The pieces were of as high a quality as she remembered, and she bought one on the spot. It shimmered against Andrea's red dress, and Miranda was sufficiently mellow at being allowed to spend her dollars so easily that she agreed to a selfie with Andy and the maker, who reminded her she was called Claudia. Yet another Italian jeweller would have a happy end to their day, as Miranda was then in the mood to add ear-rings to the purchase as well.

The two Americans walked round the circumference of Murano with their parcels, and then took the water-bus over to a smaller, even prettier island, where there was a street market. Andy provoked Miranda by buying the twins a folksy humorous Tee shirt each, and a fringed muslin shirt for herself. It was a ridiculously cheap little rag of a garment, but Miranda held her tongue, because she could see that it would be delightfully see through when Andy artlessly wore it.

Andy also bought her mother a pretty little wooden box with a painting on the lid of the Venice skyline, and a gondola sailing into the distance. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was cute, and Jenny could keep buttons in it or something. She finally bought Miranda a string of gaily coloured glass beads, in the mille-Flores design, and despite protests hung it round her neck where it looked pretty against her white linen top.

"We're being proper tourists now," she said to Miranda. "Shall we stay over here for dinner, or do you want to get back? We have an early start tomorrow, to take the car to the drop off point by the airport don't forget."

"I see a wonderful sea-food restaurant is recommended here in the guidebook, and do you know, I have a sudden desire to consume something other than pasta."

"Well, let's do it."

Later that evening, after the sun had set behind the hills on the mainland, and the moon shone down over the lapping sea, they floated home to their hotel in a waterbus, transformed into a Venetian vessel in their imagination, navigating by the shimmering road of moonlight across the waves. Miranda leant back against the gunwale and looked up at the stars.

"You know, the weird thing last night . . . "

"Yes, is it still troubling you?"

"No, that's what I wanted to say. I feel completely OK about it. It was what it was, but you were there. You and I, we are who we are. Time, space, place, it's all relative. Look at all those stars above. Most of them have actually burned out already probably, but for us they still shine. However many dimensions there are, things we're not aware of, like we can't hear radio waves without a receiver, it doesn't really matter. We exist. Here and now. And I love you."

"And I love you back."

"And you love me back. It really has been an enchanting April, hasn't it darling?"

"Yes, Miranda, it certainly has."

And as the lights of Venice grew larger and brighter the boat took them and the other day trippers safely back towards the city.

Author's Note:

This brings us to the end of Miranda and Andrea's little idyll in Italy. I hope you have enjoyed it, and its reminder of how many wonderful treasures there are to visit there, when good times return. Wikipedia has excellent articles on all the places and artwork mentioned, and a very long explanation of why Monteverdi's music was so special, with short sound clips as well. The next and final story in this series will come along shortly, in time for their much anticipated May wedding. Thanks for all your kind comments and favouring. It's good to know one is not writing into a void, but into a wonderful community of special people. You are all invited to the wedding!


End file.
